By Peter Applebone

BUCHANAN, N.Y.

Remember Indian Point? No, not the friendly Energy Center version advertised during Yankee games, but the scary nuclear plant version that New York State officials vowed to shut down after 9/11 as an unacceptable risk.

Yes, we all sort of do, in our short-attention-span way. But then in the current Madoff/bailout/exploding 401(k) moment, we sort of don’t. That’s one reason, if timing is everything, that the decision to be made next year on whether to relicense the plant for 20 more years feels close to a foregone conclusion.

Thursday was the last public run-up to the formal proceedings to determine whether the two nuclear reactors at Indian Point should continue to operate through 2033 and 2035.

The official subject at public hearings in Cortlandt Manor, not far from the plant, was the environmental impact statement on the plan to relicense the reactors, on the Hudson River bank about 35 miles north of New York City.

But nothing these days exists far from the fallout from Wall Street, so the comments were about economic issues as often as environmental ones.

“The people against it focused on the environmental issues, which is generally what they do. But, to be honest, they seemed a bit more subdued than usual on that side,” said Bob Seeger, business manager of Local 740 of the Millwright and Machinery Erectors. He was one of a number of union members and officials who testified in favor of the plant.

After decades of debate, hearings about Indian Point have the air of scripted Kabuki — proponents making a case based on jobs and energy, critics making one based on safety and the environment.

But the intensity of the arguments and the political backdrop have shifted back and forth over time. “I believe Indian Point should be closed, and it should be closed now,” Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo said at a news conference in December 2007. He announced that the state had asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deny an application to extend the license of the Indian Point plant.

Opposition to the plant peaked after 9/11. There’s still plenty of opposition from politicians and environmental groups that cite, among other issues, the negative effects of the plant’s outmoded cooling water intake system on Hudson River fisheries, the continuing leak of radioactive water into the Hudson and the absence of a workable evacuation plan or a long-term solution to the disposal of nuclear waste.

Proponents insist that the plant is safe. And anything that can be depicted as costing jobs or threatening the economy is a soft target these days. Entergy Nuclear, the owner of the plant, has been very skillful at making allies and enlisting supporters.

Class warfare may be a very bad thing in presidential politics, as Republicans seem to remind us every four years. In the politics of nuclear power, it may be a different story. So the hearing was packed with union representatives and members of groups representing low-income people — some supported in part by Entergy contributions — who were brought in from Harlem and the Bronx. They argued that their jobs and economic well-being depended on Indian Point.

In fact, everything about the Indian Point debate is more complicated than it was a decade ago. Climate change concerns have muddled the environmental issue, with a minority of environmentalists now supporting nuclear power as preferable to options emitting greenhouse gases.

The regulatory commission has never turned down a proposal to relicense a nuclear plant, and the narrow scope of the formal review process alone almost guarantees relicensing. But then no state has ever called for the shutdown of an operating plant within its borders, as New York is now doing. And no plant operates within wafting distance of such a huge population as Indian Point does.

It’s possible that the plant, the regulatory commission and the critics will find a way to split the difference next year. For example, allow Indian Point to continue operating but force it to build modern cooling towers instead of keeping the current system that uses billions of gallons of Hudson River water daily.

In truth, there may not be a good alternative to the energy produced at Indian Point. You just hope the decision on perhaps the most important environmental issue on the region’s horizon is based on smart science, economics and energy analysis, not the sense that the cold shadow of economic fear looms behind every complicated decision we’ll make.