New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced plans at present to develop a brand new nuclear energy plant, the primary to be constructed within the state in many years.
It’s the newest sign that nuclear vitality may see a comeback within the US due to wide-ranging assist from some unusual bedfellows: the Trump administration purporting to hunt “vitality dominance”; tech firms in want of extra electrical energy for AI knowledge facilities; and local weather hawks on board with nuclear vitality as a carbon pollution-free different to fossil fuels.
Nuclear vitality may see a comeback within the US due to wide-ranging assist from some unusual bedfellows
“The usage of superior nuclear know-how can present the State with a higher range of its vitality assets that may assist New York’s purpose of a rising economic system with a dependable, zero-emission electrical energy system,” New York State Power Analysis and Growth Authority president and CEO Doreen Harris mentioned in a press release.
Hochul is directing the New York Energy Authority to assemble no less than one new website for nuclear vitality upstate with the capability to generate no less than 1 gigawatt of electrical energy (about half the capability of Hoover Dam energy plant).
The state is all for advanced reactors which might be nonetheless underneath improvement, within the hopes of overcoming among the obstacles the nuclear vitality trade has confronted over time. After a increase in nuclear reactors constructed within the Nineteen Seventies and ‘80s, the know-how struggled to compete as gas-fired energy vegetation and photo voltaic and wind farms turned cheaper sources of electrical energy. Fears about nuclear accidents just like the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island and conflicts over where to store radioactive waste have additionally slowed down the trade.
The Vogtle energy plant in Georgia has develop into an instance of the sorts of issues which have plagued nuclear energy tasks; it’s the positioning of the primary all-new reactors constructed within the US in additional than three decades. After development began in 2009, Vogtle models 3 and 4 lastly came online in 2023 and 2024, roughly $17 billion over finances.
Now, the average age of a nuclear reactor within the US is 42 years outdated, with many retiring lately or scheduled to quickly shutter. That development is beginning to reverse, with assist from Large Tech and authorities incentives. Google and Amazon have each inked agreements to assist the event of next-generation nuclear reactors. Meta signed a deal this month to assist preserve a reactor constructed within the Eighties alive for one more 20 years. And Microsoft announced a power purchase agreement final yr that’s imagined to result in the restart of 1 reactor at Three Mile Island.
