Curtain lowers on nuke plant a stone's throw from Manhattan - The Hour

Curtain lowers on nuke plant a stone's throw from Manhattan - The Hour: ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - With the push of a red button, one of the two operating reactors at an aging nuclear plant serving millions of people in the New York City area will shut down Thursday night as federal regulators consider the owner's proposal to sell it to a company that plans to demolish it.
The Unit 2 reactor at the Indian Point Energy Center along the Hudson River will close for good Thursday, and Unit 3 will close in April 2021, as part of a deal reached in January 2017 between Entergy Corp., the state of New York and the environmental group Riverkeeper.
The plant generated a quarter of the electricity used in New York City and suburban Westchester County, where the plant is located, in 2017. But the corporation that runs the state's electrical grid concluded the closure won't impair its ability to keep the lights on because new natural gas plants and efficiency measures are picking up the slack.
Operators will press a button that inserts control rods into the reactor adjacent to the nuclear fuel, Entergy spokesman Jerry Nappi said Tuesday. The control rods absorb neutrons, which stops the fission that creates the energy.
Staffing will be reduced from about 800 to 30