"Governor [Kathy] Hochul is making a major push to not only build new nuclear plants in New York State but to make N.Y. the center of a nuclear revival in the U.S.," declared Mark Dunlea, chair of the Green Education and Legal Fund, and long a leader on environmental issues in the state and nationally, in a recent email calling on support to "stop Hochul's nuclear push".
Dunlea is author of the book "Putting Out the Planetary Fire: An Introduction to Climate Change and Advocacy". An Albany Law School graduate, he co-founded both the New York Public Interest Research Group and national PIRG. In an interview last week from his home in Poestenkill in upstate New York, Dunlea charged that Governor Hochul has "bought into nuclear power".
He said, "She buys the argument that nuclear is carbon-free, avoiding looking at the life cycle of nuclear and its carbon footprint," which includes, he noted, significant emissions of carbon in uranium mining, milling, enrichment, fuel fabrication and at other points. "The nuclear industry has been lobbying her to go along with it, and she has," he said.
Hochul has also become involved in promoting nuclear power nationally.
The Clean Air Task Force, based in Sunnyside in Queens, New York, which advocates nuclear power, issued a press release in February stating: "The National Association of State Energy officials announced a multi-state initiative to accelerate advanced nuclear energy projects. The initiative was first previewed by Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York last month and will be co-chaired by New York."
The heading of the release: "New York leads multi-state consortium to drive nuclear energy deployment and support state clean energy goals".
Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), based in Mount Rainier, Maryland, and formerly of Syracuse, New York, pointed out in an interview that Hochul made nuclear power "a specific priority in her State of the State speech" in January.
Hochul in the speech declared: "The economy of the future: microchips fabs [fabrication plants], data centers and the supercomputers that power AI need tremendous amounts of energy. To support these industries, we've already started developing an advanced nuclear strategy. This is a good investment. Artificial Intelligence alone is projected to drive $320 billion of economic growth in our state by 2038."
What the nuclear industry and nuclear believers in government are calling "advanced" nuclear power plants are, as the Union of Concerned Scientists has found in an extensive report, not improved and no better-- "and in some respects significantly worse-- " than current nuclear plants. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based organization has detailed this in an article headlined: "Report Finds That 'Advanced' Nuclear Reactor Designs Are No Better Than Current Reactors-- and Some Are Worse."
Hochul is a Democrat. But also, said Judson, the "New York Republican Party has been rabidly pro-nuclear." In a time of extreme partisan polarity, there is a "bipartisan consensus among the political elite in favor of nuclear power," and thus is one thing in government for which "there are bipartisan votes".
As the Syracuse.com website has reported: "Fort Drum, the U.S. Army base outside Watertown, could become the first New York site to try advanced nuclear power technology if the Army goes along with pleas from congressional representatives. U.S. Reps. Elise Stefanik and Claudia Tenney, both upstate Republicans, issued a joint letter October 25 urging the Army to put Fort Drum first in line for one of the small modular nuclear reactors that President Joe Biden and Department of Defense officials are promoting as a clean source of resilient energy."
Stefanik is a Republican front-runner to challenge Hochul in election for governor in 2026. Democrat Biden has supported nuclear power.
Hochul's predecessor as New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, also a Democrat, now seeking to be the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor in the 2025 election, has a mixed record on nuclear power.
As governor Cuomo was instrumental in closing down in 2021 the two Indian Point nuclear power plants 26 miles north of New York City, but in 2016 he engineered a $7.6 billion bail-out to allow four aged nuclear plants in upstate New York to continue to operate. Their owners then deemed them uneconomical to continue to operate.
The plants-- Fitzpatrick, Nine Mile Point 1 and 2, and Ginna-- are now owned by Constellation Energy, the largest nuclear power plant operator in the United States.
The $7.6 billion bail-out is being paid for over a 12-year period as a surcharge on electric bills of all residential and industrial customers in New York State.
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