Another failure for Indian Point emergency sirens, this time in Orange

Goshen - A majority of the Orange County sirens meant to warn of an emergency at the Indian Point nuclear power plants failed a test Tuesday, infuriating the county executive. Entergy Nuclear Northeast, owner of the two plants in Westchester County, said that 10 of the 16 sirens in Orange failed to sound during a morning test. They all worked later in the day during a different type of test but that did not assuage County Executive Edward Diana. “This is totally unacceptable and Orange County will just not stand for it any longer,” Diana said. “We have to have a redundant system that works 100 percent of the time.” The sirens have been a steady headache for Entergy, and the company has pledged to replace the entire system with state-of-the-art equipment within the next two years. Meanwhile, Entergy is working on the existing system of 156 rotating, pole-mounted sirens in areas of Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Orange counties that are within 10 miles of the plants. Some of the 16 sirens in Orange County are located in the towns of Woodbury and Tuxedo. The primary alert sytem uses phone lines to activiate the sirens. A backup system uses radio signals. During a test of the backup system last month, none of Rockland’s 51 sirens responded. On Tuesday, it was again the backup system that failed, but this time in Orange. Entergy spokesman Jim Steets said company experts would “troubleshoot and try to replicate what happened. We’ll go through the software, test the various parts. It’s important to reassure Orange County that these sirens will work.” Diana demanded another test of both the primary and backup systems within 30 days. “Both of those systems must work 100 percent of the time for all four counties,” he said. Steets said that when the primary, phone-line system was tested Tuesday, it activated 155 of the 156 sirens, missing one in Rockland County.