Teach-in on June 30 laid out the costs of a plan that could put New Yorkers on the hook for more than $23.9 billion.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Joyceline Kwarko, joyceline@agreeny.org
SYRACUSE, NY – On Tuesday, June 30, a group of 51 Syracuse residents, local advocates, and community leaders gathered for a teach-in on Governor Hochul’s plan to more than double the amount of nuclear energy produced in New York. The teach-in was one of nine events held across the state over two days, as New Yorkers from Buffalo to Long Island made the same case to the Governor: an expensive nuclear gamble is the wrong answer for families already struggling with the cost of energy.
The gathering came weeks after the state took its first formal steps toward the buildout. On June 11, the Hochul administration released a policy plan that kicked off a process to approve incentives for a massive new nuclear reactor buildout in New York. The following day, state agencies released a policy paper outlining policy subsidies that could reach $23.9 billion to build and operate new reactors, a figure many experts consider an underestimate based on recent nuclear projects. That is on top of the roughly $40 billion New York residents are already paying through their energy bills to keep existing reactors open.
“New Yorkers are being asked to pour billions into an energy source with a long record of runaway costs and broken promises, all while families struggle to pay their utility bills,” said Andra Leimanis, Program Director at Alliance for a Green Economy (AGREE). “We can build an energy system that is clean, reliable, and affordable using solutions that are ready today. The June 30 teach-in was about giving our neighbors the facts and a real way to be heard before the state locks us into decades of costs we cannot undo.”
The cost of this plan runs directly counter to the Governor’s stated goal of making energy more affordable. The same dollars could instead lower utility bills and build reliable, clean energy that families across the state can count on. Earlier this year, more than 200 national, state, and local groups, along with representatives from six Indigenous Nations, sent letters to Governor Hochul requesting she drop her plan to build 5 gigawatts of new nuclear power.
“Utilities and state politicians have treated Central New York as a nuclear colony for too long,” said Tim Judson, Syracuse resident and Executive Director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. “We have paid the price with radioactive pollution and high utility bills for decades, costing untold lives and jobs and piling up hundreds of tons of nuclear waste on the shore of Lake Ontario with no solution. We must reject the governor’s plan to saddle us with billions of dollars in debt payments on our energy bills and generations of danger to our health. We can power our communities with affordable, safe, and clean energy and pull the plug on Gov. Hochul’s nuclear plan.”
“For 60 years, planners and politicians have told us they would solve the nuclear waste problem of accumulated spent fuel rods. Those promises have been false, and the number of spent fuel rods at the three reactors in Scriba continues to mount. We have poisoned the Senecas and Cattaraugus Creek with the spent fuel rod dump at West Valley. Escalating the number of nuclear reactors is astonishingly irresponsible, and now, this new state plan will only kick the responsibility for these highly radioactive wastes to our grandchildren,” said Joseph Heath, Esq., General Counsel for the Onondaga Nation.
“The so-called “Peaceful Atom” is anything but peaceful. New nuclear reactor designs can be reconfigured to produce material for weapons even more easily than earlier designs. Many new reactors, including small modular reactors (SMRs), would use nuclear fuel that requires either higher enriched uranium or plutonium, both of which can be used to make nuclear weapons. We should keep in mind that some companies striving to develop new power plant designs have direct links to the nuclear weapons sector,” said Diane Swords, Member, Nuclear Free World Committee of Syracuse Peace Council and Board Member of National Back from the Brink Coalition.
Over the course of the evening, attendees learned about the history of nuclear reactors in the region, the relationship between nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, and the steps they can take to tell the Governor not to lock the state into a lifetime of cost overruns, delays, radioactive waste, and taxpayer-funded bailouts. The evening closed with clear action steps residents could take right away.
The Syracuse teach-in was hosted by All Saints Parish, Alliance for a Green Economy, Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation, Heath Law Office, and Nuclear Information and Resource Service, with speakers Freida Jacques, Joe Heath, Diane Swords, Sarah Howard, and Tim Judson. It was part of the two days of distributed actions including rallies, press conferences, teach-ins, and demonstrations in Albany, New York City, Buffalo, Binghamton, Massena, Mineola, Montrose, Rochester, and Syracuse on June 30 and July 1.
About Alliance for a Green Economy: Alliance for a Green Economy (AGREE) is a New York based nonprofit advancing a just transition to a clean, affordable, and democratically controlled energy system, with a focus on protecting ratepayers and accelerating the state’s climate goals.
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