(New York) New York State governor Kathy Hochul announced on Monday that she started the project for a new nuclear power plant, in a country that has not seen any construction in the sector since 2009.
The manager gave mission to the Energy Agency for this State to “develop and build a new generation nuclear power plant in the northern New York State,” she said at a press conference.
Several operators have started, in recent months in the United States, the reopening of existing inactive or closing plants, but there has not yet been a question of building a new reactor.
The New York Democrat governor wants this new power plant to have a capacity of a Gigawatt hour (GWH), equivalent to the production of a conventional power station.
It does not exclude building other reactors in the coming years.
Kathy Hochul did not specify whether this new power plant would be made up of a single reactor or if it would be based on small new generation reactors, SMR (Small Modular Reactor).
Many of these are under development, but none has yet obtained a building permit for the American nuclear regulator, the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission).
Since the serious incident of the Three Mile Island site (Pennsylvania), which almost caused the rupture of a reactor in a reactor and the radioactive contamination of an entire region, only one permit was issued to the United States.
It concerned units 3 and 4 of the Vogtle site, located near Waynesboro (Georgia). Unit 3 was put into service in July 2023 and unit 4 in April 2024.
Long unpopular, especially due to a series of accidents, in Three Mile Island, Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011), nuclear is experiencing renewed interest around the world.
This return to grace is explained by the redistribution of energy supplies due to the Russian invasion in Ukraine, of the search for a source of electricity with low emissions, but also of the insatiable appetite of computer science.
The development of infonuagic (Cloud) and artificial intelligence (AI) have increased needs for storage and data management centers, very gourmet in electricity.
“We have attracted some of the most innovative companies in the world,” said Kathy Hochul. “They arrive, but now our challenge is to provide them with electricity to prosper. »»
