In case you missed it, here is New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s breathless announcement from yesterday: “Governor Hochul Directs New York Power Authority to Develop a Zero-Emission Advanced Nuclear Energy Technology Power Plant.” And here is Hochul’s picture of herself making the announcement:
Does something here seem like it doesn’t quite fit? Yes, it was just four years ago, in April 2021, that New York completed the forced closure of the two perfectly functional Indian Point nuclear plants, with combined generating capacity of about 2 GW, for no other reason than relentless opposition from environmentalists and NIMBYs. And yet now the Governor is saying that the plan is to start over and build a new nuclear plant at some unspecified place.
Before getting to a few of the problems, let’s start with some of the excited language from the Governor’s press release:
Governor Kathy Hochul today directed the New York Power Authority (NYPA) to develop and construct a zero-emission advanced nuclear power plant in Upstate New York to support a reliable and affordable electric grid, while providing the necessary zero-emission electricity to achieve a clean energy economy. . . . “As New York State electrifies its economy, deactivates aging fossil fuel power generation and continues to attract large manufacturers that create good-paying jobs, 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,” Governor Hochul said. . . .
NYPA, in coordination with the Department of Public Service (DPS), will seek to develop at least one new nuclear energy facility with a combined capacity of no less than one gigawatt of electricity, either alone or in partnership with private entities, to support the state’s electric grid and the people and businesses that rely on it. NYPA will immediately begin evaluation of technologies, business models, and locations for this first nuclear power plant and will secure the key partnerships needed for the project. This process will include site and technology feasibility assessments as well as consideration of financing options, in coordination with the forthcoming studies included in the master plan. . . .
Now who wouldn’t want “a reliable and affordable electric grid” that provides “the necessary zero-emission electricity to achieve a clean energy economy”? Not meaning to be the grinch here, but let me lay out a few of the problems that I have with the approach to energy policy for New York as described by our Governor:
- Are we really talking about just one new nuclear plant with just one GW of generation capacity? That is barely a drop in the bucket compared to the immediate need, and doesn’t even meaningfully address the problem of keeping the grid operating as we pursue a statutorily-mandated transition to mostly wind and solar generation. The State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (CLCPA) demands closure of at least 20 GW of dispatchable power plants running on natural gas; and the State’s Independent System Operator, NYISO, has stated that the State needs at least 20 GW of what they call “dispatchable emissions-free resources” (DEFR) to replace the natural gas generation. Nuclear is the only plausible DEFR. So why we are going to build only one GW of new nuclear capacity? Wouldn’t you think the Governor would at least mention the rather large disparity between the identified need and her plan?
- The Governor’s announcement doesn’t say anything about the timeline, beyond making it clear that this project hasn’t even gotten to the most preliminary of preliminary steps. (“NYPA will immediately begin evaluation of technologies, business models, and locations for this first nuclear power plant. . . .”). We don’t even know the “technology” or the “business model” yet, let alone the location. The most recent nuclear plant to begin operation in the United States — Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia — took 15 years from start of construction in 2009 until commencement of operation in 2024. Fifteen years from now is 2040, by which year the CLCPA mandates that New York produce all its electricity from “zero-emissions” sources. But before Governor Hochul’s unicorn power plant can begin construction, we must have not just selection of technology, business model, and location, but also such things as preparation and completion of an EIS, permitting, design, awarding of a contract, financing, and, don’t let me forget, defeat of a few dozen litigations attempting to block the project. We will be very, very lucky if this plant is ready to operate by 2045. 2050 would be more likely — if it ever operates at all.
- Shouldn’t there be at least some mention by the Gov that the CLCPA plan for a “zero emissions” electricity grid by 2040 has become completely unachievable — indeed, ridiculous? 20+ GW of reliable natural gas generation will go away by the mid-2030s, to be replaced by — what? One 1 GW nuclear plant, to maybe become available some time post-2045? That’s a complete joke. How about Hochul’s other plan for 6 GW/24 GWh of “grid-scale” battery storage? Per calculations at this post from March 2024, New York would need at least 720 hours of average usage, which is 12,240 GWh of energy storage, to reliably back up a grid predominantly powered by wind and sun; the 24 GWh in our Gov’s plan would be about 0.2% of that requirement. Another complete joke. Is there a third proposal? Not that I can find.
So what is Governor Hochul even thinking when she puts out a proposal for a single new nuclear power plant, describing it as supporting a future “reliable and affordable electric grid,” when she knows that her proposal represents at best 5% of what is needed and at least 5 to 10 years too late? What this proposal clearly is not is a serious plan to move toward a “zero-emissions” grid by the statutory mandate of 2040. Being charitable toward our Governor, perhaps the idea here is to lay down a marker, so that when her 1 GW nuclear plant proposal gets killed by some combination of environmental activism and bureaucratic stumbling, she will be able to say that she tried to put forth a solution but got blocked. The alternative hypothesis — that Governor Hochul actually thinks her 1 GW nuclear plant proposal is a relevant solution to the problem at hand — would imply that the Gov operates at essentially a kindergarten level of incompetence.
I’ll let you pick which of these two alternatives is more likely. Meanwhile, let this be your good laugh for today.
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Hochul appears to really be as stupid as she comes across as. But malevolent never the less.
Perhaps she is simply aware of the mentality level of the audience to which she preaches. Bumper sticker slogans on the pulpit indicate such. Let’s face it, New York City residents just overwhelmingly primaried a mayoral candidate who is a mix of Marxist and Sharia, promising freebies and get out of jail free cards. Reality would only be a burden to them.
Clearly they wish to be unburdened.
Democrats have known now for decades that their pronouncements do not have to make any kind of economic, scientific, or common, sense. They just have to sound good to make their low-information base feel good.
They don’t ever have to solve a problem, in fact, it’s in their interest to keep a problem going, so they can forever increase the public monies thrown at it and increase control. The mainstream media helps them in this by never asking any hard questions.
Unfortunately Hochul and similar are NOT operating at a ‘kindergarten level of incompetence’, far from it. They know exactly what they are doing which is to funnel HUGE amounts of money to their cronies while at the same time implementing socialism and control over the populace.
As your analysis shows there are EASY questions that could have been asked at this ‘presser’ that clearly the press didn’t ask…its the Press that are operating at ‘kindergarten levels of incompetence’ and in many, many ways that’s worse.
I suspect what’s going on here is that Hochul is up for election in 2026. All of the economic indicators for New York State are down severely. The State is bleeding jobs and taxpayers to other, more hospitable states in the US. So, I suspect that Hochul and her handlers are desperate for any ploy that would help them against the tide of disaster which has deservedly befallen the Democrats since November las year. They know that they could easily be swept out of office by voter fury over their mishandling of everything to do with the State’s economy.
So, they make an utterly ridiculous promise which they have no intention of keeping simply to have a talking point for the public. The media in turn had no interest in asking tough questions because the Times and the rest of the lamestream media are part of the charade.
So they promise some new nuclear pie-in-the-sky even though only a few years ago they murdered a perfectly well-functioning Indian Point. These swine deserve the s**t-kicking they are about to get.
NY’s problems are getting worse. NYC Democrats have just nominated as their candidate for mayor, a man so far to the left that he makes Bernie Sanders look conservative. He has campaigned on government owned grocery stores, replacing the police with social workers, massive increases in taxes on the wealthy etc.
Are they going to put up barricades to keep the wealthy in?
A few countries like Venezuela tried that and it didn’t work out so well.
Are they going to put up barricades to keep the wealthy in?
A few countries like Venezuela tried that and it didn’t work out so well.
https://www.news.com.au/world/south-america/when-venezuela-descended-into-chaos-this-is-where-the-rich-ones-went/news-story/696e36529b5d6686dac7bbf8c9497295
All extreme socialist countries have always done this.One of the very first things they all do is impose travel restrictions. After all, it’s not much of a ‘worker’s paradise’ if the inmates are all fleeing to the exits. The physical form of this was in the Berlin Wall built in 1961 to keep East Germans from fleeing to the West. Nazi Germany imposed restrictions by demanding identification papers to permit travel.
It’s hardly surprising that people are trying to flee by the millions from the communist hell-hole that is Venezuela.
The Communist State of California has the highest rate of emigration to other States in the US. Second is New York and third is Illinois.
So yes, they always try to create barricades to keep the inmates trapped. After all, what else was a Nazi concentration camp in the early 1940s?
https://babylonbee.com/news/democrats-discover-innovative-strategy-of-promising-free-stuff-to-stupid-people
Demanding that the other side, when conceding our points, be wiped out is hardly how one persuades others to change their minds. Not advocating for re-electing Hochul, far from it. But the anti warmunism movement cannot survive if that’s how we treat the vanquished when they finally concede that we are correct in not believing that renewables are the path to the future.
What, did we expect that any governor, even a Republican governor of a red state, would actually come out and demand that we build hundreds of nuke plants NOW and immediately shut down the renewables industry? That’s no more realistic than the warmunists’ claims we can run a 21st century society solely on renewables.
The power grid does not instantaneously flip like a switch. It takes many decades to make a significant difference in how it functions. Beginning a move back to nuclear is long overdue, and it starts one plant at a time. In NY it would be better still if they reopened the two shuttered plants, thus bringing three nukes online that aren’t generating today.
No we didn’t expect a governor to “come out and demand that we build hundreds of nuke plants NOW and immediately shut down the renewables industry” but calling for shutting down 20 G of natural gas facilities is something we certainly don’t expect from her cronies.
Jo, I reckon she knows that they won’t shut down all that gas completely. Here in Oz, I am absolutely certain that the renewableists know that they won’t shut all the coal in, but their self-righteous sanctimonious purity won’t allow them to say it. I have got it in writing from one leftist federal government MP in Oz that he thinks that nuclear would be the cheaper way to go.
Restarting Indian Point is likely not possible. See my remarks below.
As to the other, New York is a one-party state. There is no meaningful policy choice there, just as there is no meaningful choice in California or Illinois. The delusions about renewable power were never about the environment. They were about limiting access to electricity and giving government complete control of that access including power rationing.
You do not negotiate with communists; you crush them.
The reactors are in the process of being dismantled, but that is only a small part of a nuclear power plant … the properties themselves plus all the auxiliary equipment plus the grid connections still exist. These would be ideal to install a next gen reactor using the streamlined licensing process the Trump admin has adopted. It may not quite be “plug and play”, but the US Navy has replaced reactors in their ships and subs.
Michigan is renovating the Palisades nuclear power plant. I believe California is planning to extend the life of Diablo Canyon. I see no reason why the decommissioning of Indian Point reactors could be reversed.
I think you celebrate way too soon.
You’re offering to ferry a scorpion.
Not celebrating … but learn to take “yes” for an answer. That’s simply good negotiating technique – just ask Trump. He spent the last dozen years crapping all over NATO for not paying enough for their own defense … then this week he got NATO to finally agree to up their defense expenditures as % GDP to about the same as the US now spends. And as a result he was all smiles this week and now NATO is his new BFF.
THAT’s how you win the long game.
That wasn’t a yes.
I don’t think we will achieve agreement on this.
At this point in time, there is no reason to stop crapping on Hochul. Stopping now won’t help.
She will probably still tell you that the president can’t/doesn’t influence oil prices, as long it fits her (emotional) needs and political arguments. Being shit on is the best she deserves.
“its the Press that are operating at ‘kindergarten levels of incompetence’ and in many, many ways that’s worse.”
You’re making the same mistake. The press are complicit, not ignorant.
Sorry, I must respectfully disagree. It implies that the Gov operates at a professional, industrial, tenured academic level of incompetence.
Nicely put.
Indian Point was too close to Long Island. Deep into upstate could work.
I am in Rochester, NY where we have Ginna running successfully on Lake Ontario for decades. I say bring on 20 more nuke plants from Ripley on the shore of Lake Erie to Sackets Harbor on the shore of Lake Ontario!
But of course, in NY State, that will never happen….
There is file at Wikipedia on the Ginna nuclear power plant which is second oldest operating plant in the US.
Indian Point operated safely for decades. And I’m sure Long Island is quite the power thirsty part of the state, right on the heels of the parts of NYC not located ON it.
Too close in what way?
It’s ON Long-guyland isn’t it?
Maybe Kevin meant to say Too close to New York City.
Un-effing believable! The insanity astounds.
If she really wanted “to ensure New York controls its energy future”, she would just lift the fracking ban.
AND ditch the “zero emissions” mandates!
And that would be nice for New England once they become de-woked. 🙂
Indeed I’m laughing…”Holzkopf” is a german expression for a stubborn and not too bright person. DRAX in the UK would be perfect to dispose of them. The electric energy generated would not only be free, it would give you money back….tons of it.
Never mind the local emissions 🤣
no politicians = no harm = no foul
This cynical lizard knows that none of the bills will come due while she is in office. It is all posturing.
Location shouldn’t be an issue, as long as it’s in Canada, from where NY likes to get its power. Canadians can ship hydro generated power to NY to provide “greenness” and use the new nuclear power domestically. NY electric rate and/or taxpayers can make up the cost difference by paying the new nuclear generated rate for the imported Canadian hydro. What’s not to like?
Oh but nuclear is “zero emissions” too. No need to limit exports to hydro.
AGW: Climate Zealots don’t accept zero emission nuclear as being sufficiently Green.
The Canadians are going to build a couple of new reactors at their Darlington site.
Four new SMRs are to be built at Darlington and at least three large power reactors are to be built at Bruce.
Where’s that “smack my head” emoji when I need one?
All I can say is how thrilled I am to NOT live in NY any more. I heard NYC was having “brownouts” a couple of days ago – just picture how things will get if the Eco-Nazis get their way on plant closures and “electrification” of heating systems.
From the department of redundancy department … “Zero emission nuclear … “
I wouldn’t assume the 10-15 year timeframe to build a new nuke plant is going to be the case going forward. The Trump administration is already deregulating nuclear power plant licensing which will substantially cut the timeframes of new plant development.
The two plants at Indian Point should also be restarted. Not sure how far they’ve gotten in dismantling those plants, if any at all, but it takes longer to decommission a nuke plant than it takes to build one.
I dunno … crapping on a Dem governor for finally acknowledging the reality of the stupidity of anti-nukeism seems to be a case of failing to take “yes” for an answer. That doesn’t mean New Yorkers must reelect Hochul. But at the end of the day the fight against global warmunism cannot be driven by purist expecations that everyone must fully agree with us and abjectively apologize for being totally wrong until now.
Take wins wherever we get them, and acting like a sore winner only makes persuasion that much more difficult.
There are no wins here. Hochul is lying. She has no intention of building new nuclear power reactors; she’s desperate to halt the tidal wave of anti-Democrat feeling in New York State. Her election prospects are not particularly good, even in communist New York. So she and her handlers are clutching at any straw to delude the public that they have a plan for reliable power. Even they now understand that their intentions to rely on wind/solar were an expensive disaster.
No, Indian Point cannot be restarted without a huge construction project and capital investment. An no one is going to trust Hochul for anything resembling political support for long term nuclear capital investment.
I wouldn’t be so sure of that. When it comes to the complicated task of pandering to a variety of voter constituencies which aren’t necessarily on the same energy policy page, Kathy Hochul is as smart and as canny a politician as you will find anywhere.
As I’ve discussed previously at some length in a previous comment here, she might go for an SMR project as a means of satisfying pro-nuclear voter constituencies in western NYS and in upstate NYS, working in a partnership with Ontario to build a second GE-Hitachi BWRX-300 SMR in New York state, leveraging on Canadian nuclear construction expertise to keep an NYS project on cost and on schedule.
Was the Indian Point facility dismantled or only shut down? Could it be revived?
Joseph Zorzin: “Was the Indian Point facility dismantled or only shut down? Could it be revived?”
The answer is no. As I understand the situation, the decommissioning process for the shuttered New York reactors has progressed too far to allow for their recovery.
Largely as a consequence of our withered US industrial base, replacing those shuttered reactors with new reactors will cost possibly six times what the decommissioned reactors originally cost as measured in constant dollars.
We see the same situation in Germany. Only three of the 22 reactors the Germans shut down since 2011 are recoverable. The other nineteen are too far along in the decommissioning process and cannot be retrieved.
As a consequence of the lack of a robust nuclear construction industrial base in Europe, it is also a fact that replacing all those decommissioned German reactors with new ones will cost four to six times what the shuttered ones originally cost.
Doesn’t France still have a nuclear construction industrial base or have they also given up on nuclear? If theirs still exists, they could build for other nations.
Once France had finished building the fleet of reactors needed to fulfill their energy security and reliability goals, construction slowed down considerably and much of their nuclear construction practical experience and their nuclear project managerial expertise was lost.
The UK is in the same situation. As is the United States. The most experienced and generally reliable sources of 21st Century nuclear construction experience and expertise are to be found in Russia, in China, and in South Korea.
France (EDF) has made a mess (way over budget) in its newer plants. I would suggest South Korea or China would be much better.
Only Constellation the former owner can answer that. The short answer is likely not. Unless they are maintained, steam plants degrade very rapidly after shutdown and abandonment. By now, five years after it was shut down, much of its steam systems, pipe work and steam generators may be worthless scrap.
It’s my understanding that the containment buildings at Indian Point are now so structurally compromised by decommissioning activities that even those would have to be replaced.
Not gonna happen …..
I think it likely that the state demanded a technical approach and a schedule for decommissioning of the plant which effectively forclosed any possibility of ever recovering it.
I saw one of the headlines yesterday that said NY to build first reactor in decades. They need to check their facts. Georgia Power/ Southern has brought 2 new reactors on line in the last few years. Bellu button warriors = NY.
This is a crack in the dam, I’ll take it. There is no way their net zero plan can be done, even they are seeing it. Let’s not view Vogtle as the standard. It was being built in an era when these guys thought fossil fuel and nuclear were both history. We knew they weren’t and now they know they aren’t. Push for new nuclear. Can any retired nuclear be restarted? Push for fossil fuel plants to be upgraded or replaced with modern ones. We need to drag these shysters into reality. The reality is wind and solar can’t compete with fossil fuel and nuclear on any level.