20-02-2025
New York seeks to lead in advanced reactor deployment
Summary
New York has taken steps to become a hub for small modular reactor (SMR) development by releasing a nuclear strategy and requesting federal funding amid rising electricity demand.
February 20 - New York Governor Kathy Hochul launched a Master Plan for Responsible Advanced Nuclear Development on January 14, which will be guided by a blueprint by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) published on the same day. The announcements follow a Request for Information (RFI) to gauge market interest in developing advanced nuclear energy technologies that New York issued in November.
The blueprint lists large (AP1000s) and small light-water reactors, liquid and solid-fueled molten salt reactors, sodium fast reactors and high temperature gas reactors as potential technologies that could be deployed to meet the state's energy needs. NYSERDA also included fusion energy as an option.
'New York has been working on this plan for quite a while, but they accelerated it and created a blueprint to intentionally try to not miss the moment of extreme demand growth,' Adam Stein, director of nuclear energy innovation at the Breakthrough Institute, told Reuters Events.
Driven by strong demand from data centers and other large load customers, U.S. electricity demand is expected to increase by 3% annually for the rest of the decade – a rate of growth not seen since the 1990s. According to NYSERDA, New York's power generation must at least triple, from 37 GW in 2022, as demand is forecast to surge by between 50% and 90% over the next two decades.
CHART: Forecast US data center electricity demand
Also in January, NYSERDA and Constellation Energy requested funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to attain an early site permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to build one or more advanced nuclear reactors at Constellation's Nine Mile Point Clean Energy Center on the shore of Lake Ontario.
'There is a lot of speculation on which technology they plan to use, but it isn't necessary to identify one at this stage of site planning," Stein said.
Constellation holds a minority interest in Rolls Royce SMR development in Europe but that may not be an indicator on their technology preference in the U.S., he said.
'NYSERDA might prefer to be second or third in building a design that already has first-mover commitments,' Stein added.
Through the blueprint, New York is telling developers of advanced nuclear reactors and investors that it wants to engage and cooperate with them, while the partnership with Constellation signals that there will be proactive support for the sector, according to Judi Greenwald, executive director of the Nuclear Innovation Alliance.
'All of the above' approach
Deep-pocketed tech companies are investing billions in SMR companies such as X-Energy, Oklo and Kairos Power as they race to secure more generation capacity for their power-hungry data centers.
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Advanced nuclear technologies are still in the exploratory stage, so it's too early to know to what the extent they will be deployed in New York, Doreen Harris, NYSERDA president and CEO, told Reuters Events.
Zach Koshgarian, an analyst at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, said that New York 'is looking at an all of the above nuclear approach — considering a lot of different types of technologies,' including large nuclear reactors.
'The point of putting out the blueprint and the RFI is to gauge interest within New York State, and to see how advanced nuclear energy could be applied to help meet climate and clean energy commitments,' Koshgarian told Reuters Events.
The plans of Micron, a microchip fabricator, to build a manufacturing campus to make dynamic random-access memory chips in central New York, which will use 100% renewable electricity, underline the state's need for increasing generating capacity.
The Micron facility is expected to use 16 gigawatt-hours per year when completed, according to the Sierra Club environmental group, which is nearly equivalent to the total generated by the two nuclear reactors at Constellation's nearby Nine Mile Point nuclear generating station.
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Microsoft and Amazon Web Services signed agreements with nuclear power plant owners to supply electricity to data centers in neighboring Pennsylvania in 2024. If New York wants to attract large data centers and advanced manufacturing facilities, there needs to be an increase in emissions-free generating capacity, according to Stein and Koshgarian.
Bolstering nuclear capacity will also help New York meet its aggressive climate goals. The state has pledged to have a zero-emission electricity sector by 2040.
'We know that we are going to need tens of gigawatts of these types of projects that we describe as dispatchable, emissions free resources that can be very complementary to renewable resources that we are deploying also at a large scale,' Harris said.
CHART: New York power generation by technology (October 2024)
With 3.3 GW of capacity, nuclear power accounted for roughly 22% of New York's utility-scale net generation in 2023, which is down from 34% in 2019 before the Indian Point nuclear power plant was shut down, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
'A few years ago, New York was thinking more about closing [nuclear] plants than building new plants, and I would now say that has really turned around, and people are realizing the value of these existing plants,' Greenwald said. 'I think most of these will be relicensed, not closed, because they provide so much clean, firm power.'
Nuclear renaissance
President Donald Trump is expected to continue with the ambitious goals to expand nuclear capacity set out by the Biden administration. Last November, the Biden administration pledged to more than triple U.S. nuclear capacity by deploying 200 GW of net new nuclear capacity by 2050.
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Trump's Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, a former Oklo board member, has pledged to promote next-generation nuclear technology to help unleash a 'long-awaited American nuclear renaissance.'
Other states have also announced plans to support advanced nuclear power developers. In November, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the Public Utility Commission of Texas released a report stating that additional funding and regulatory changes could make the state a global leader in advanced nuclear energy. Wyoming, Michigan and Virginia are also trying to attract nuclear investments.
And New York is working with other states to promote the development of advanced nuclear projects.
The National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO) launched the Advanced Nuclear First Mover Initiative on February 5. As part of this effort, New York and nine other states pledged to develop policies that will cut the cost of building advanced nuclear plants.
'If states are aligned and agree on a standardized advanced reactor design, this could make the idea of orderbooks of nuclear reactors come to fruition. The state collaboration will also be critical to achieving a learning-by-doing model and creating economies of scale, which will all help drive down the cost of new nuclear,' Koshgarian said.
