Trump admin finds unlikely ally in pursuit of ‘nuclear renaissance’

New York is looking to expand nuclear power in the state by building a major nuclear plant, Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Monday.

Just a few years after the state closed the Indian Point nuclear facility, Hochul directed New York’s public electricity utility to increase its nuclear power capacity to strengthen the state’s electricity grid and reduce soaring utility costs, according to the WSJ. New York went public with its plans weeks after President Donald Trump signed several executive orders to expand nuclear energy in May. The development that Hochul has in mind would reportedly provide power to approximately one million homes in New York in partnership with Constellation Energy.

“I’m going to lean into making sure that every company that wants to come to New York and everyone who wants to live here will never have to worry about reliability and affordability when it comes to their utility costs,” Hochul told the WSJ.

The state closed the Indian Point nuclear facility back in 2021, a development that climate activist groups championed due to the purported safety and environmental risks posed by the plant, though the closure may have led to an increase in emissions, the DCNF reported previously. New York has higher utility bills than average, and its commitment to green energy technology like wind and solar has decreased the reliability of the state’s power grid, experts previously explained to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The nuclear capacity would either stem from one large reactor or multiple smaller ones that could produce the target of one gigawatt combined, according to WSJ. Officials are looking to avoid the hurdles that plagued the most recent nuclear reactors that went live in Georgia, which resulted in a delayed schedule and an inflated budget.

New York gets about a fifth of its power from nuclear energy, and the expansion of the technology has been smothered by red tape, according to Hochul.

“Why does it take a decade?” Hochul told the WSJ, in reference to the nuclear power plant permitting process. “That’s why no one is doing it; the barriers are too high.”

Since the 1990s, the U.S. has only built a few major nuclear reactors, and several nuclear plants have been retired gradually as infrastructure ages. The Trump administration has worked to ease the regulatory burden on the energy sector in order to unleash a “nuclear renaissance” and address the national energy emergency Trump declared upon returning to the Oval Office.

Hochul’s office and Constellation did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

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