Indian Point from the start

A $15 million siren warning system misses its third deadline to become operational. The three delays cost Entergy nearly $800,000 in fines. The biggest one slapped by the NRC was for $650,000 on Jan. 25 for the third missed deadline. That fine was 10 times the normal base fine.

The system was designed to alert homes in a 10-mile radius of the reactors in case of an emergency, using 172 sirens around the area that sent out a blast tone of 70 decibels for four minutes. Tone-alert radios were offered to 2,445 homes not in a position to hear the sirens, which have been having operational trouble since 2005. Those failures, including interruptions because of two storms in July 2005, prompted Westchester County executive Andrew Spano to ask, "How many times does a system have to fail until immediate action is taken?"

The system would finally go into service on Aug. 27, 2008.