RIP Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, 1962-2021

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New York’s Indian Point Energy Center, a nuclear power plant 35 miles (57 kilometers) from the heart of Times Square, shut down its last reactor on Friday.

The closure of Indian Point ends a decade-plus dispute to shutter the plant. New York will lose its single biggest source of carbon-free energy, which at least in the near term, could lead to an uptick in greenhouse gas emissions as the state turns to natural gas to replace it. Proponents, though, have argued it was time for an aging plant with major local opposition to shut down. The closure will be a test case in a state with strong climate policies in place on how fast the transition to clean energy can happen while shutting down nuclear power, which is currently the biggest source of clean energy in the U.S.

Indian Point’s shutdown has been coming for years. In 2017, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the plant’s operator, energy giant Entergy, had reached an agreement with the state to shut down the facility. The first of the site’s two functioning reactors shut down in April of last year. On Friday, the second shut down, marking the end of an era.