New York is planning to build a nuclear power plant capable of producing enough electricity for as many as 1 million homes in an as-yet-unnamed upstate location, Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Monday.
Ms. Hochul said the plant, which would produce half as much power as the Indian Point complex north of New York City that was shut down four years ago, would help avert the “rolling blackouts” that have plagued some other states. She did not say how much the project would cost or how long it would take to complete but said that New York would seek investment from the private sector.
The governor said that safety would be “at the forefront” of the state’s planning and that the new plant would meet rigorous environmental standards.
“This is not your grandparents’ nuclear reactor. You’re not going to see this in a movie starring Jane Fonda,” she said, referring to “China Syndrome,” the 1979 movie about a nuclear meltdown.
Nuclear power has enjoyed a resurgence of interest from states and companies in recent years, in part because the plants don’t produce the greenhouse gases that are rapidly heating the planet, and they can run at all hours, unlike wind and solar power.
Tech giants like Amazon, Google and Microsoft have begun investing in nuclear power to help meet soaring electricity demand from their A.I. data centers. States like Illinois, Montana and Wisconsin have lifted longstanding bans on the construction of new nuclear plants. Texas this month approved a $350 million fund to build new reactors.
That’s a sharp turnaround from a decade ago, when New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania and California were beginning to retire their older reactors, a move that many lawmakers now say was a mistake.
In 2021, Indian Point, a two-gigawatt nuclear plant in Westchester County, shut down under pressure from then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who said that having the plant close to a large population center defied “basic sanity.” The plant’s shutdown meant that New York had to burn more fossil fuels like natural gas for electricity, and the state’s grid operator has postponed plans to close some of its older gas-burning plants in order to avoid blackouts.
While efforts are currently underway to restart previously closed plants in Michigan and Pennsylvania, experts say that Indian Point is very likely to be too far along in the process of being dismantled to reopen.
Ms. Hochul, who was lieutenant governor at the time Indian Point shut down, has since criticized Mr. Cuomo for not having a sustainable “Plan B” for replacing the plant’s output, which amounted to as much as 25 percent of the electricity consumed by New York City.
She said that in recent meetings with President Trump, she had pressed him to make the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission more efficient so that permits for a new plant could be obtained in less than 10 years.
Last month, Mr. Trump signed a series of executive orders aimed at speeding up the development of new nuclear power plants by ordering the commission, the nation’s independent nuclear safety regulator, to ease the process for approving new plants.
New York still derives about one-fifth of its electricity from three nuclear plants operated by Constellation Energy on the south shore of Lake Ontario. In January, Constellation and the New York State Research and Development Authority sought federal funding for their effort to obtain permits for one or more advanced reactors at the Nine Mile Point Clean Energy Center in Oswego.
The New York Power Authority, the state-owned utility, will manage the project that the governor announced Monday. Ms. Hochul said that the state had already begun identifying potential “host communities” for the new plant, but did not provide any names. “Everybody’s raising their hand right now,” she said. “It’s going to be hard to decide.”
Only three new reactors have come online in the United States in the last 30 years, and many utilities have been deterred by the high price tag. The two most recent reactors built in Georgia cost $35 billion, double the initial estimates. While some companies hope that a new generation of smaller reactors could prove cheaper to build, they remain unproven.
Randy Wolken, chief executive of the Manufacturers Association of Central New York, said Ms. Hochul’s announcement would be “a pivot point for the future” of manufacturing in the state. He cited Micron Technology’s plan to build computer-chip factories near Syracuse as one of several developments that will require significant amounts of emissions-free energy.
The effort to build new nuclear power plants is likely to face opposition from some environmental groups, who would prefer that the state focus on building wind and solar power and who dismiss nuclear power as too costly.
The power authority “should be laser focused on rapidly scaling up their build-out of affordable solar and wind which is the only way to meet the state’s science-based climate goals and lower energy bills,” said the Public Power NY coalition, which is made up of advocacy groups that have pushed the state to build publicly owned renewable energy.
State Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat, raised a number of concerns about Governor Hochul’s plan in a statement. “Is it the most cost-effective use of our clean energy dollars,” she asked. “Can the radioactive material be disposed of in a satisfactory way?”
“I have yet to see any real-world examples of new nuclear development for which all of these questions can be answered in the affirmative, and I am skeptical that I ever will,” Ms. Krueger wrote.
Patrick McGeehan is a Times reporter who covers the economy of New York City and its airports and other transportation hubs.
Brad Plumer is a Times reporter who covers technology and policy efforts to address global warming.
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