Syracuse, N.Y. -- The big takeaway from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s energy summit Thursday in Syracuse was this: Her administration is taking a hard look at supporting the development of new nuclear plants.
During the conference, state energy officials released a “draft blueprint’' for considering how advanced nuclear technology might benefit the energy system. They encouraged the public to comment on it. Comments are due by Oct. 5.
Following a comment period, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority will begin a “master planning process’' to look at the long-term potential for advanced nuclear technology in the state’s energy system, said Doreen Harris, president and CEO of NYSERDA.
Kicking off the conference, Hochul said nuclear could be part of an “all-of-the-above’' strategy to beef up New York’s electric grid while also complying with legislative mandates to eliminate carbon emissions.
“We will get there. And I’m so excited about all the above approaches … from wind and solar to geothermal, hydrogen or even splitting an atom,’’ Hochul said.
But atom-splitting got a lot more attention than wind or solar. Two of the five panel discussions focused on advanced nuclear technology and how it might fit into the energy system and the economy.
Related story: America’s oldest nuclear plants are in Upstate, and NY needs them. We have some big decisions to make
The conference even attracted two street protests – one for nuclear energy, the other against.
Although the various designs for advanced nuclear reactors are still considered years away from commercial deployment, New York officials clearly intended Thursday’s event to kick off a public discussion about whether and how to bring new nukes to New York.
Here are four big reasons nuclear energy drew support at the conference Thursday, and two of the major obstacles against it:
Rising demand
The New York Independent System Operator, which runs the electric grid, recently estimated that the state needs to triple its generating capacity over the next two decades.
The need is so great that renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are unlikely to fill it, officials said. Even if the state hits its ambitious goal of 70% renewable power by 2030, rising to 80% in later years, it’s going to need other sources, Harris said.
“We need to start talking about the other 20%,’’ she said.
New York is not alone in projecting sharply rising demand for electricity. Nationwide, increasing numbers of artificial intelligence data centers, electric vehicles and electric heating systems have experts predicting a spike in demand after decades of little growth.
Economic development
In the past couple years, New York has recruited new energy-hungry industries. That’s ratcheting up estimates of future electric demand even further.
Example No. 1 is Micron Technology. Micron alone is expected to use more electricity than Vermont and New Hampshire combined if it builds all four chip fabs planned in Central New York.
“There’s a very specific reason we are here in Syracuse today,’’ Harris said. “Micron investing $100 billion in the town of Clay is certainly one of the largest economic development projects in U.S. history.”
Micron and many major technology companies are eager to buy “clean firm power,’’ which is produced without greenhouse gas emissions and can be relied on 24/7 regardless of the weather or other variables. It’s difficult to supply that level of reliability with renewable energy sources alone, said Varum Sivaram, a climate and energy fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“If you try and make 24/7, 100% clean electricity, you’re going to run into challenges, before we have next generation nuclear on the grid,’’ Sivaram said. “You’re going to run into very expensive, prohibitive costs for that 95th percentile power.’’
Micron has pledged to use renewable energy for its operations in New York. Amber Bieg, the company’s global sustainability manager, said that commitment is not inconsistent with support for nuclear power.
“I think we often in the world of clean energy get hung up on semantics, and we have false comparisons or false tradeoffs,’’ Bieg said. “And I’d say one of those false tradeoffs is the tradeoff between nuclear and renewables. … The future toward a zero-carbon economy has to include every single available energy resource that is commercially viable, safe and affordable. That includes nuclear.’’
Increasingly, the ability to supply clean, affordable and reliable power will be a critical factor in the competition among states -- and between nations -- for economic development, Sivaram said.
“There could not be a more important topic,’’ he said.
There is federal money available
Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act and other recent legislation, the federal government offers significant financial support, regulatory help and tax credits for new nuclear plants.
If New York is going to jump on the advanced nuclear bandwagon, it might as well do so while the help is available, Harris said.
“There is a very real reason that we’re talking about nuclear power today,’’ she said during a break in the panel discussions. “And I would say the primary reason is because, Number One, we have extraordinary bipartisan support for the technology coming from the federal government. … We need to leverage every dollar we can, and if there’s federal leverage to be had, we need to think about what that could provide for New York state.’’
Downsizing
The nation’s two newest nuclear reactors, comparable in size to Nine Mile Point Unit 2 in Oswego County, started up during the past year. They have scared away anyone hoping to build a similar plant in the U.S.
Construction of the two new reactors at Plant Vogtle started in 2009 and ended up costing about $35 billion. Construction took seven years longer and cost twice as much as expected.
But most advanced nuclear reactors are designed to be smaller – one-quarter the size of the Vogtle units, or less – and therefore cheaper to build, conference participants said. If the costs of early adoption exceed projections, at least the overruns will be much smaller than at Vogtle.
The only such plant currently under development in North America is a 300-megawatt small modular reactor in southern Ontario, Canada. The government-owned Ontario Power Generation plans to have the new plant online by 2029, said Nicolle Butcher, chief operations officer.
What stands in nuclear’s way?
Financial risks
Despite all the interest in advanced nuclear power plants, the financial risk of leading the way to build one is holding the industry in check. The Vogtle plants were the first U.S. nukes built in more than three decades, and their development exposed the loss of experienced workers, reliable supply chains and engineering knowledge since then.
Bringing back a nuclear industry will not be easy at first, said Armond Cohen, chair of the Clean Energy Task Force, an environmental advocacy group.
“I think we should not underestimate how huge this lift is,’’ Cohen said.
Cohen suggested that New York and the federal government might have to jointly support a project financially to get the first new nuke built.
“Nuclear is different,’’ he said. “It is clean. It’s similar in many ways to other technologies, but it is different. The money is large, and in the early stages of rollout, it’s the risks of a project -- both cost overruns and time overruns.’’
Public opinion?
Several speakers at the energy summit noted that both Democrats and Republicans in Washington support expanding nuclear power. And polling shows that a majority of Americans -- some 56% -- support building new nuclear plants, according to Pew Research Center.
But at the local level, the subject can still be divisive.
That was evident Thursday outside the energy summit at the Marriott Downtown Syracuse, where about 60 protestors gathered to denounce the discussions of nuclear power.
“Governor Hochul’s climate leadership is in freefall,’’ said Laura Shindell, New York director of Food & Water Watch, an environmental group. “Now, at the very moment that we need Gov. Hochul to be our climate’s strongest defender, she is instead wining and dining the slow, expensive, dirty and dangerous nuclear industry.”
Shindell and other activists called nuclear power a “fairytale distraction’' that will weaken the state’s efforts to meet climate goals mandated by the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.
They were joined by Cornell University professor Robert Howarth, who served with Harris on the Climate Action Council that drew up the state’s plan to comply with the law’s mandates.
Aside from its environmental hazards – including uranium mining, much of which mars lands occupied by Indigenous peoples – nuclear power is too expensive and too slow to construct to help meet New York’s emission reduction goals, Howarth said.
Spending on nuclear will detract from the development of more beneficial power sources, he said.
“It’s nonsense in terms of our energy future in New York, even if it had an acceptable environmental and health footprint, which it does not,’’ Howarth said. “We can meet all of the energy needs of New York with solar, with hydro and wind and appropriate (energy) storage.’’
But the energy summit also drew a pro-nuclear protest. U.S. Rep. Brandon Williams, R-Sennett, and members of Nuclear New York held their own sidewalk event to protest the anti-nuclear protest.
Williams, a former nuclear submarine officer, said he strongly supports new nuclear power for New York. But he does not support New York’s mandate of zero-emission electricity, which he said is costly and ineffective.
“This goal of net-zero emissions is based on ideology, not on economics and not on engineering and not on science,’’ Williams said.
Staff writer Tim Knauss can be reached at: email | Twitter | 315-470-3023.
