New York plans to build a nuclear power plant in the upstate region, becoming the first state to pursue a major new facility in more than 15 years.
Gov. Kathy Hochul made the announcement Monday — one month to the day after President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders intent on reviving the country’s nuclear-energy capabilities.
“The country is talking about semiconductor manufacturing. Well, you know what? They don't run on dreams,” Hochul said at the Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant in Lewiston, Niagara County. “They need to be powered. They need a lot of electricity.”
Hochul said she was working with the White House to accelerate a development that would add at least 1 gigawatt of nuclear-powered energy — enough to support about 1 million homes. She said the added capacity also is needed to sustain semiconductor and artificial intelligence facilities that are setting up shop in New York.
“We must embrace an energy policy of abundance that centers on energy independence and supply chain security to ensure New York controls its energy future,” Hochul said, also casting the project as a means to address affordability.
“Ratepayers must know there is reliability,” Hochul said. “They must be able to see in the future and know what their bills will be.”
Hochul directed the New York Power Authority — which was established by then-Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt almost a century ago — to find a site in upstate New York and propose a design for the plant. The state later clarified that the goal is “to develop at least one new nuclear energy facility ... either alone or in partnership with private entities.”
For decades, the nuclear industry in the U.S. has been near-dormant beyond the currently 94 commercial nuclear reactors that powers of tens of millions of homes, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. Nuclear plants produce about 20% of the country’s electricity. But recent years have seen a number of plants shut down out of safety concerns, exorbitant maintenance costs and prohibitive renovation expenses.
But expanding the country’s nuclear energy capabilities – first in New York – is one place where Trump and Hochul have seem to have found common ground. Trump signed executive orders in May with the intention to quadruple domestic production of nuclear power — adding 300 gigawatts of new capacity by 2050. “It’s time for nuclear, and we’re going to do it very big,” Trump said at the Oval Office signing of the orders.
Much of their conversation, Hochul said, has been about expanding energy resources in the country. She and the president negotiated to lift his stop-work order on an offshore wind project, and discussed resuming two natural gas pipeline projects that the state had previously shelved.
“I’ve had some very frank, interesting conversations with the President, all kinds of topics,” she said. “But every single one of them, I’ve brought it back to nuclear.”
The governor’s announcement already is getting pushback. Expanding nuclear energy in New York would be an “extremely expensive” pursuit that also poses “real, serious environmental (and) health risks,” said Anne Rabe, a coordinator for Don’t Waste New York and former senior advisor for the New York Public Interest Research Group.
“It’s a horrifically irresponsible pursuit of a technology that creates long-lived deadly radioactive waste,” said Rabe, who organized to stop then-Gov. Mario Cuomo from opening the West Valley Demonstration Project a nuclear fuel processing facility in the late 1980s.
New York ratepayers are paying about $500 million annually to cover costs for maintenance of the nuclear reactors in the state, Rabe said.
The Indian Point nuclear power plant in Westchester County was closed in 2021 out of concern that it was contaminating the Hudson River. Indian Point is one of three nuclear power reactors that have been shut down in New York, while four continue operating at upstate sites in Oswego and Wayne Counties.
State Sen. Liz Krueger, who heads the State Senate Finance Committee, said she has more questions than answers about the safety and feasibility of building a new nuclear power plant.
“This is a question of: Is it safe? Is it cost efficient? Can it be built in our lifetime and are we going to make sure the communities have full disclosure and full rights to say, ‘Not here’?” said Krueger, an influential state politician from Manhattan.
Krueger said the recent closing of Indian Point makes her doubtful that the state has proper locations to store radioactive waste.
“That said, I keep an open mind to the future, where maybe someday there will be a way to build safe nuclear plants that are completely different than the ones we have,” she said. “But so far, there are no real-world examples of this new nuclear development that can answer all the questions we, New Yorkers, should have before we move forward.”
State Republicans, including Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay, called the announcement from Hochul a “positive step forward.”
“As a longtime advocate for nuclear energy — especially with existing plants in Oswego County — I know the critical role it has played for decades as a clean, reliable source of power for New Yorkers,” he wrote in a statement. “Too often overlooked in the debate over the environment, nuclear energy remains one of the most efficient and low-emission energy sources available to meet the state’s electricity demands.”
Several Republicans have begun vying to have the plant be located in their districts.
Barclay, who represents Fulton, Oswego and surrounding areas, said Oswego — located on the shores of Lake Ontario — would be the “ideal” site for a new facility. State Sen. Jake Ashby, R-Rensselaer County, near Albany, said the plant is suited to be in his district, where universities such as the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are “producing workers with precisely the technical skills required to take full advantage of this generational opportunity.”
State Sen. George Borrello, a Republican who represents Dunkirk, another Lake Ontario shoreline community, said the state could convert the NRG power plant in the town into a new nuclear power plant.
“This would bring back critical tax revenue, generate well-paying jobs, and deliver the long-overdue economic recovery that Dunkirk desperately needs,” Borrello wrote in a statement.
