The Nuclear Power Revolution Reaches New York
Politcal Whisperer
By Robert Hornak
You know an important election is approaching when elected representatives abandon the long-standing political ideology of their party and actually take actions that many people consider long overdue.
That very thing just happened. Gov. Kathy Hochul, despite generally strong opposition from democrats, just announced that she has directed The New York Power Authority, the utility owned by the state, to build a new nuclear reactor in upstate NY. This new facility will provide approximately half the energy that the 2.0 GW Indian Point facility provided before it was closed.
The closing of Indian Point is considered by most people to be the perfect storm of policy failure. It was ordered by the Cuomo-Hochul administration with no plan to make up for the loss of 25% of the supply being provided by Indian Point to NYC. The fallout was the loss of 1,000 good-paying jobs at the facility and economic activity at surrounding local businesses.
Ultimately, three new natural gas fired power plants were built that replaced 1.8 GW of the energy lost. Nevertheless, energy costs in NY have been skyrocketing as demand grows. Rolling blackouts have become a constant summer concern as we just witnessed in south Queens where 300,000 homes lost power during a summer heatwave.
Meanwhile, other states have embraced the new nuclear revolution and the new technologies that have been created in recent decades that are far superior to the tech used when most of our current nuclear facilities were built over 50 years ago. Just as we’ve witnessed with the space program, nobody is looking to use the old 1950’s tech that Indian Point was created with.
Hochul made sure to drive that point home in her announcement, proclaiming, “This is not your grandparents’ nuclear reactor. You’re not going to see this in a movie starring Jane Fonda,” in a reference to Fonda’s 1970’s movie The China Syndrome that nearly killed the nuclear power industry by fantastically fictionalizing the worst case scenario of a nuclear reactor meltdown. This was in spite of the reality that we never had a nuclear plant failure or a single death associated with nuclear energy in the U.S.
In recent years many states have realized the insanity of denying the potential of nuclear power to meet future energy needs and have overturned bans on new nuclear plants. Texas, struggling with its recent self-inflicted energy shortfall from a reliance on new, unreliable wind and solar plants, has just approved a $350 million fund to build new nuclear plants.
Some of our largest tech companies, including Amazon and Google, who have incredible energy needs to power server farms have also begun investing in nuclear energy to power their operations.
And, of course, there were the recent Executive Orders signed by President Trump to speed up the process for the Nuclear Regulatory Agency to approve new permits and generally make building new nuclear reactors much faster.
All this is welcome news to most New Yorkers who have been hit with massive electricity bills in recent years that are making living in NY unaffordable for many people. Crushingly high energy bills are just one more reason that there has been an exodus of people from New York to lower cost of living, low tax states like Florida.
But while welcome news, this just scratches the surface of the problem and the need. Many areas upstate are anxious to be the site for this new plant and the many good paying jobs and economic activity it will bring. Unemployment upstate has been abysmal and the exodus out of NY has hit upstate the hardest.
This, however, should be a first step to making NY a leader in building a nuclear powered future. Communities all across upstate would be thrilled to get a reactor that would revive their local economy while providing desperately needed, reliable and affordable energy for downstate.
This would be a win-win for everyone. Will Hochul embrace this long overdue win for New Yorkers and build on it or will this just be a one-time election season stunt? Maybe the pressure of reelection will make this more than just a gimmick. Time will tell.