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The biggest hurdle to building a new nuclear power station in the United States? Getting someone to pay for it.
In the 1990s, much of the U.S. liberalized electricity markets, breaking up the monopoly utilities that once owned the power plants, managed the distribution system and sold the electrons to ratepayers in favor of competitive auctions. This made financing a project that takes a decade and costs billions of dollars virtually impossible to justify when cheaper natural gas plants or renewables were an option.
As a result, the U.S. has only built three new reactors this century. Two were constructed in Georgia, where Southern Company’s old-fashioned monopoly model gave the utility giant the leeway to fund the pair that just came online at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant. The other was the federally-owned Tennessee Valley Authority’s reactor that came online in 2016 after starting construction decades earlier. While there are pilot projects to build next-generation small modular reactors at early stages right now — including one that relies on the TVA copying what Ontario’s state-owned utility pulls of there are no new commercial nuclear plants actively under construction anywhere in the country.
New York wants to change that by putting the state government in charge of building its first new nuclear plant in nearly 40 years.
Like much of the nation, the Empire State built all four of its nuclear power stations by the end of the 1980s, before liberalizing its electricity market in 1996. But New York has something other states do not: the largest government-owned utility in the country other than the TVA.
At a Monday morning press conference at the state’s biggest power station, Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered the New York Power Authority to build “at least one” new nuclear power station generating 1 gigawatt of electricity somewhere in Upstate New York by 2040. A gigawatt, or 1,000 megawatts, is enough to power over a million homes.
“Some people say you can’t clean the grid and grow it at the same time. Sounds like defeatism to me,” Hochul said from a podium at the the NYPA-owned Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant, a hydroelectric facility near Niagara Falls. “This is New York. That’s not how we think. We don’t back down from the hard problems. We solve them and we build bigger and bolder than anyone could have imagined.”
Less than two years ago, Hochul backed a bill that hamstrung decommissioning on New York City’s shuttered nuclear plant, the Indian Point facility, in apparent violation of federal law. In January, however, the Democrat released a nuclear “master plan” that aimed to put New York at the forefront of a bipartisan coalition of more than a dozen states aiming to hasten deployment of nuclear reactors. She even sought common ground with President Donald Trump during recent meetings by urging the White House to work with Albany on expanding nuclear power.
“There's only one commercially viable option that can deliver that much clean, renewable, reliable power, and that's what's been operating in New York for decades,” Hochul said. “Nuclear energy, harnessing the power of the atom is the best way to generate steady, zero emission electricity.”
The Hochul administration had already tasked NYPA with speeding up construction of transmission lines and renewable power, as mandated under the Build Public Renewables Act the state legislature passed in 2023. In May, NYPA announced its first project under the expanded authority the legislation granted – a 20 megawatt solar farm in Washington County, north of Albany.
But the governor’s nuclear order would bring 50 times as much steady, zero-carbon power to the grid from a single facility, avoiding some of the blowback in rural communities to renewables that require vast areas of open land.
New York’s legally-enshrined decarbonization goals under the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act require the state to generate 100% of its electricity from zero-carbon sources by 2040. Meeting those goals “will require not only maximizing renewable energy, but also ensuring a stable supply of clean, dispatchable electricity,” said Lindsay Anderson, a professor and senior faculty fellow at Cornell University’s Atkinson Center for Sustainability.
“This is especially critical as the state prepares for a surge in electricity demand driven by the rapid growth of data centers and high-tech manufacturing,” she said in a statement. “A 1 gigawatt advanced nuclear power plant in New York would be a strategic investment.”
At 42%, natural gas generates the bulk of the state’s power currently, followed by hydroelectric at 23% and nuclear power at 21%, according to the latest federal data from March. Renewables such as wind and solar make up just under 14%.
Under the order, Hochul – a Democrat running for reelection next year – directed NYPA to “immediately begin evaluation of technologies, business models, and locations for this first nuclear power plant.” NYPA can develop the project “either alone or in partnership with private entities.”
“Hochul has guts,” Dietmar Detering, the chairman of the advocacy group Nuclear New York, told me.
“We have a very clear and very strong signal showing real leadership in New York. What New York has and other states do not is we have NYPA,” he added. “It’s awesome for Hochul to draw on that strength and make use of it.”
The NYPA announcement won praise from labor unions and manufacturers.
“New York’s clean energy future depends on reviving and expanding nuclear power,” said Maro Cilento, the president of the New York State chapter of the AFL-CIO. “Without it, emissions are rising, and grid reliability is at risk.”
Micron Technology, the semiconductor maker building a $100 billion megafab in Onondaga County, called the nuclear plant “essential to supporting high-tech manufacturing.”
The news came as New York City is bracing for potential brownouts. The densely populated downstate region is facing a shortage of electricity since the shutdown of New York’s fourth nuclear plant, the Indian Point Energy Center, in 2021. With surging demand from air conditioning, the city’s power provider is already warning ratepayers to cut back on electricity usage in triple-digit temperatures to avoid power cuts.
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PROGRAMMING NOTE: I have had a bunch of new stories out since my last update.
What I’m most excited about: I made my debut in the MIT Technology Review with a long print feature on the costs of Puerto Rico’s doubling down on fossil fuels.
I had a new piece up in The Atlantic on the confusing logic of Trump’s energy efficiency rollbacks.
Over at Fortune, I published a feature on how Southern Company’s made nuclear history with a new type of reactor fuel in one of the older units at Plant Vogtle.
At Canary Media, I had a piece about the U.S. losing its landmark entry to the global race for green steel.
And over at Latitude Media, I wrote about Facebook-owner Meta’s bet on geothermal startup XGS, the frustrating “misuse” of the metric known as levelized cost of energy in debates over power plants, the transformer startup Heron Power’s bid to make the Tesla of grid tech, and the surge of energy sector mergers last year.
I made some appearances as well. I was on the BBC World Service twice, once for my usual gig on the “Business Matters” program and again for a segment on “World Business Report” about the Meta-XGS geothermal deal.
I also flew out to Chicago last Tuesday just for the day to moderate a two-hour panel with an all-star lineup at the American Nuclear Society conference. You can watch it here:
This edition’s soundtrack is one of the great hip-hop classics of my childhood, which needs no introduction from me.
Signing off from a sweltering Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where our utility, ConEdison, is warning us of potential brownouts on Tuesday when voters go to the polls to cast ballots in a primary election for mayor that former Gov. Andrew Cuomo – who is responsible for shutting down the nuclear power plants that once provided the bulk of our electricity – is favored to win.
