Hochul's $100B nuclear plan will raise LIers' electric rates

Long Islanders have some of the highest electricity rates in the nation — and it's been that way for decades. Utility bill increases this winter have been particularly brutal, and Gov. Kathy Hochul's plan to start building five large nuclear plants, which easily could cost $100 billion, will inevitably cause rates to soar statewide.

A little-known reason for outsized energy bills on Long Island stems from the enormous cost overruns associated with the ill-fated Shoreham nuclear plant. In 1965, the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) announced it would build a nuclear plant there.

Construction began in 1973 and was finished in 1985 at a cost of $5.6 billion, a remarkable "1200% over budget," as John Howard, the former head of the state Public Service Commission, told WCNY last year. It was never operated commercially, but ratepayers saw a 37% increase by the mid-1990s, and they're still paying it off.

Now, the governor wants to bring back nuclear power to New York. The new reactors being planned may not be located on Long Island, but they will spike Long Island's electricity costs again, with every ratepayer or taxpayer in New York obligated to pay the bill.

Indeed, the only U.S. commercial reactors built this century — the only ones the state modeled in its deeply flawed December Energy Plan — are the twin 1.1-gigawatt AP1000 reactors at Georgia's Vogtle plant. Yet, Vogtle was "the most expensive power plant ever built on earth," with an "astoundingly high" electricity cost. The final cost was about $20 billion per reactor. Georgians now have to pay almost 25% higher rates.

But in January, Hochul said she wanted the state to build 5 GW of new nuclear reactors. No state has tried to build more than two at the same time in decades. As E&E News reported in November, the Trump administration "has yet to convince" even a single utility to build a new large reactor.

Hochul is forging ahead just as the people at LILCO did over 50 years ago as they pushed forward with the Shoreham plant. The leaders at LILCO believed that nuclear power would be a good thing for Long Islanders. They refused to listen, and they were wrong.

As has been shown time and again, nuclear power is far too expensive. Nuclear reactors are incredibly complicated machines requiring the highest standards of construction. The four nuclear reactors now operating in New York State require billions of dollars in ratepayer subsidies just to keep going. The PSC approved another $33 billion of subsidies to keep them afloat.

A Wood Mackenzie analysis projected that in 2030 small modular reactors and conventional nuclear would be the most expensive sources of power, followed by natural gas, the Financial Times reported last fall. Solar power plus batteries would cost far less. Renewable energy keeps dropping in price, and batteries are down 50% just in the last few years.

That's why, despite the president's ongoing efforts to thwart clean energy, the Trump administration's own energy analysts projected in February that 79% of all U.S. utility-scale generating capacity additions this year would be solar and batteries, with another 14% from wind. Long Island has similar potential. State legislators should heed the lessons of the past and insist upon an affordable and renewable energy future.

This guest essay reflects the views of Fred Harrison, a utility ratepayer advocate, longtime Shoreham opponent and member of the Alliance for a Nuclear Free New York, and Joseph Romm, a former acting assistant secretary of energy and senior research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.