Title: Gov. Hochul's Proposal for a New Nuclear Plant

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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. Now, for the Health & Climate Tuesdays section of the show. Today, this announcement by Governor Hochul last week.

Governor Hochul: I'm directing the New York State Power Authority to develop and construct a brand new advanced nuclear plant in upstate New York.

Brigid Bergin: New York is struggling to meet its targets for clean energy. Is nuclear power the answer? To talk more about the context for this announcement and the current pros and cons of nuclear power, we're joined by New York Times Reporter Patrick McGeehan, who covers the infrastructure of New York City and the surrounding area. Patrick, welcome back to the show.

Patrick McGeehan: Hello. Thanks for having me.

Brigid Bergin: Now, Patrick, how much do we know about what Governor Hochul has in mind as to the capacity and location of this new plant she wants to build?

Patrick McGeehan: Well, we don't know anything about the location yet. That hasn't been determined, but we do know that she's looking to add 1 gigawatt of nuclear power, which would be roughly enough to power about a million homes in the state.

Brigid Bergin: Wow. She was still Lieutenant Governor when Andrew Cuomo started the process of shutting down the Indian Point nuclear power plant in 2021, which is some 30-odd miles up the Hudson from New York City. By comparison, how much power did it produce, and what's replaced it?

Patrick McGeehan: Yes, this does seem like a 180-degree reversal here for people who haven't been following this too closely, because Indian Point was twice as big as what she's proposing here. It produced about 2 gigawatts of power, most of which went into the New York City metro area because the plant was in the downstate area, so close to the city. Now, we're looking at something that would be upstate, so the power would basically be consumed upstate. It wouldn't really help the problem that lower New York has, which is a looming shortage of power.

Brigid Bergin: Patrick, in 2019, New York passed a law to require the state to generate 70% of its energy from renewables by 2030 and to have net-zero emissions by 2050. Now, nuclear power doesn't release greenhouse gases, but it's not renewable in that uranium has to be mined and could theoretically run out. How does this fit into those energy requirements?

Patrick McGeehan: This wasn't really the plan at the time. The plan was to produce all this power with wind and solar and hydro, not more nuclear. Nuclear was on its way out with the shutdown of Indian Point, but the governor's plan has run into problems because producing all that power with wind and solar is turning out to be more difficult and slower than they had hoped. They're way behind the pace that they need to be on to meet those goals. In the big climate law.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, do you think nuclear energy has a role to play in fighting climate change, or do you have a question for Patrick McGeehan from the New York Times? Give us your take on our energy future at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can call or text at that number. Patrick, the governor pointed to the jobs that would be created in building and running a plant. Would a similar investment in renewable energy have fewer jobs?

Patrick McGeehan: First of all, those numbers are kind of pie in the sky. I don't know how anyone could predict how many permanent jobs there would be at a nuclear power plant that hasn't been designed, whose size and location and technology have yet to be determined. That's just a big round number that I don't think is-- I think it's back of the envelope at best, but nuclear power plant is more labor-intensive than, say, an offshore wind farm, where once it's built it, it operates on its own and it just needs to be maintained. It'd be a bigger job creator than a bunch of offshore wind farms.

Brigid Bergin: I want to go to the phones. Let's start with Courtney in Peekskill, New York. Courtney, thanks for calling WNYC.

Courtney: Thank you. Thanks for having me. I live in Peekskill. My neighborhood is less than a mile from Indian Point nuclear power plant. My community is stuck with this albatross, and this just seems like a huge mistake and a huge waste of money for New York State. The expense, ratepayers in New York have already spent over 4 billion of a promised 8 billion bailing out the existing nuclear plants, and now we're going to invest billions in this non-existent technology? How much renewable energy could we have built in that time?

The timeline, Hochul says 15 years. We don't have 15 years. The DOE has been dumping money into this since 2014, and we have nothing to show for it. Now, my community, we're dealing with the fallout, literally and figuratively, of the waste. What industry is honest about the safety? None. From mining it to disposing of it, the nuclear industry and our oversight agencies are not taking this seriously.

We have this new plant. Contaminated soil, a million gallons of radioactive wastewater, 40 years of spent fuel, 35 miles north of New York City, the WNYC Studios, all sitting on top of a massive fracked gas transmission pipeline system that New York State Nuclear Regulatory Commission, everybody signed off on it. The DOE literally thinks they're going to-- they came here and proposed loading the nuke waste onto the Hudson line at Croton-Harmon train station commuter rail.

Brigid Bergin: I'm going to jump in, Courtney, because I want to give Patrick a chance to react. I think in what I'm hearing from Courtney, there are a lot of pushback from someone who was very close to what was an active nuclear power plant. No longer. Do you have a sense that the governor has a plan for dealing with whatever kind of community engagement and outreach they're going to need to do when the sighting part of this comes up?

Patrick McGeehan: I think they're well aware of how sensitive an issue this is. The governor said that a lot of communities were already raising their hands to be the location for this new plant, but she didn't name any. It seems that the most likely location would be a place that already has a nuclear power plant, like Oswego, up on Lake Ontario. It's certainly not going to go anywhere near Westchester County, given the history there with Indian Point and the sentiment that people like this caller have about the current dismantling of Indian Point and what's going to happen to all that nuclear waste.

Brigid Bergin: Oswego, were you saying? Is that on Lake Ontario? I'm getting my upstate geography. I feel like Oswego is more Central New York, but maybe it's on another lake?

Patrick McGeehan: The state's nuclear power plants are up on the lake, on the south shore of the lake. They're all concentrated in one part of the state, far away from New York City and Peekskill.

Brigid Bergin: Governor Hochul also said, "This is not your grandparents' nuclear reactor." Any sense of what she means by that?

Patrick McGeehan: She is proposing in hinting at a modern technology that's being bandied about a lot. They call these small modular reactors. There aren't any in operation in the country yet, though, but the idea is that they would be smaller and safer than the big Indian Point style reactors that people see and fear from movies like China Syndrome.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. Let's go to Suzanna in Westfield, New Jersey, who has some generational perspective on nuclear power. Suzanna, thanks for calling WNYC.

Suzanna: Hi. I am 62 years old. I remember Chernobyl. I remember all kinds of nuclear disasters. There was an earthquake when I was in Maine, and I lived near a nuclear reactor there that was not earthquake-proof. My feelings for many years have been very anti-nuke. However, my daughter is a mechanical engineer from Cornell. She is extremely concerned about climate change and she feels very, very strongly that nuclear energy is one of the many tools that we need to use to get away from fossil fuels.

What has been interesting to me is we've had long conversations about this, and she has explained that the new technology for future nuclear reactors is completely different from that used in the '70s, and that a nuclear meltdown, for example, would defy the law of physics. All of my safety concerns have been allayed by my long conversations with her about the actual physical design of future nuclear reactors. I am coming around to seeing her point of view that nuclear energy might have to be one of the ways that we move away from fossil fuels.

Brigid Bergin: Suzanna, that's a fascinating perspective. Patrick, can you talk or react at least a bit to what Suzanna was saying in terms of, I guess, starts to get into not your grandparents' nuclear power plant comment that Governor Hochul was talking about. That structurally, we're talking about really physically different designs.

Patrick McGeehan: Yes, there's a lot of support, growing support, I would say, for nuclear again, because people like Bill Gates are out promoting this technology as completely different than the earlier generation of nuclear power plants. As I said, it's still yet to be proven here in this country. I mean, there isn't a nuclear power plant in this country of this sort operating now. There are some in other countries, but it's still new and relatively untested. I'd say the jury's still out on whether you could persuade the public that they'll be that much safer, and that the environment will be less harmed by this new technology.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to Scott in Yonkers. Scott, you're on WNYC.

Scott: Hi, guys. From 2019 to now, here in Yonkers, myself and all my neighbors have seen a dramatic increase in energy costs, and it really has to do with the state forcing utilities to do these green initiatives. That's the real cost of this as we speak, but in terms of the dangers, it's well known in Russia, in remote areas, they have small nuclear power plants on barges. I always think that would be the best alternative here. If something goes wrong with the power plant, you don't move 16 million people. You just move the plant on a barge. I hope Governor Hochul is listening. This is, I think, the best solution for this problem.

Brigid Bergin: Scott, thanks so much for your call. Several callers have talked about some of the health risks, some of the disadvantages, issues with uranium mining and meltdown risks and waste. To what extent has the governor talked about how that would be handled?

Patrick McGeehan: Not very much. We don't really have any details on that. The waste issue is a very big one. You're still going to have uranium powering a nuclear power plant and you're still going to have to deal with spent nuclear fuel, which is what's happening now at Indian Point. They've shut down the reactors, but they have all this spent nuclear fuel that they're putting in these big concrete caskets, but they don't have a final resting place for it. Moving it and burying it somewhere is an intractable problem so far.

Brigid Bergin: If you're just joining us, you're listening to The Brian Lehrer Show at WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Brian today. This is our Health & Climate Tuesdays segment. Today, we're joined by Patrick McGeehan, who reports on New York infrastructure for the New York Times. We're talking about nuclear power, and Governor Hochul's call for the creation of a new nuclear power plant upstate. We're taking your calls and reactions. The number, of course, 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can also text at that number.

Patrick, other states are starting some nuclear plants that had been decommissioned. Was restarting Indian Point considered in this?

Patrick McGeehan: Not really. Indian Point's pretty far along in the decommissioning dismantling. The owner of Indian Point, the company that bought it to shut it down, says that it's not impossible that it could be restarted, but it would be very difficult. It's not on the list of plants that could be recommissioned. Given the political sensitivity that led Governor Cuomo to pressure for the shutdown in the first place, I don't think that's in the cards.

Brigid Bergin: One of the callers mentioned the length of the permitting process. I think it takes something in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 years. We're clearly at an early stage. What kind of timeline are we looking at if this plan is to proceed?

Patrick McGeehan: Interestingly, I think Governor Hochul may have a friend in President Trump in this regard because he has been calling for a much more streamlined permitting process for nuclear plants. We don't know how much faster it actually can be done, but he's put through some executive orders that suggest that this administration will speed up the process to get nuclear plants online to power big factories like the ones that President Trump has been touting.

Brigid Bergin: One of our listeners texted, "I recently spoke with my cousin who is an engineer and project manager for nuclear energy with General Electric, and he explained to me how incredibly safe the new nuclear tech is, including the extreme thickness of the caskets in which waste is now stored, and as a climate change and environmental activist, I am now somewhat supportive of nuclear energy." We thank you for that text. A lot of different opinions here. Patrick, I'm wondering if you can talk about the role the high-tech industry like AI could play in this. The state wants to attract energy demands for the state?

Patrick McGeehan: Yes. There are a lot of big companies that are building data centers, and we have a company in New York, Micron Technology, that wants to build factories for computer chips. These facilities take a lot of power. This is one reason states are entertaining the idea of more nuclear is because the power demands of these big employers are so high, and they're jockeying for the siting of these facilities.

Brigid Bergin: Patrick, then what becomes the next steps? Does this require legislative approval? How does a project like this begin to move forward?

Patrick McGeehan: The governor put this in the hands of the New York Power Authority, which is a state-owned utility. That implies maybe a more streamlined process. I don't know that it requires any legislative approval, but certainly, the legislature could stand in the way of it if it chose to. Politics is certainly going to play a part in this, whether Governor Hochul wants it to or not. It's to be determined, I think, how much opposition there would be to this plan.

Brigid Bergin: We're going to have to leave it there for today. This has been our Health & Climate Tuesday with a look at Governor Hochul's plan to build a new nuclear power plant upstate. I want to thank our guest, Patrick McGeehan, who reports on New York infrastructure for The New York Times.

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