Subtitle (199)
0:01It's a very small, very snowy town on
Lake Ontario with a population of 17,000.
0:06They have a movie theater, a
children's museum, a flower shop,
0:10and three nuclear power plants within 10 miles.
0:13And they want another one.
0:15I think our residents overwhelmingly will
support a fourth nuclear power plant.
0:19So here in New York, Governor Hochul recently
0:21announced plans to build a
new nuclear reactor upstate.
0:24And a big part of the reason why is the increased
need in electricity from AI and data centers.
0:29Harnessing the power of the atom is the best way
to generate steady zero emission electricity.
0:36Nuclear energy has come up as one of the
potential solutions because it can deliver a
0:42huge amount of electricity 24 hours a day and
without producing greenhouse gas emissions.
0:47But a lot of people are nervous about having
nuclear in their area, understandably.
0:51Disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl,
0:53and Fukushima Daiichi dominate the
public imagination of nuclear power.
0:58Well, mostly dominate it.
1:00As much as I loved watching
The Simpsons growing up,
1:02a lot of what they show on the
screen is not what reality is.
1:05But there are a lot of challenges
for building nuclear in the US.
1:08So, I'm headed to US Wego to find
out more about why this town wants
1:11another nuclear power plant and what
would happen next if it got one.
1:20Personally, I wasn't sure I'd be
comfortable having nuclear power so close.
1:25So, I met with the mayor of Oswego
to ask why nuclear power has been
1:28so great for this small town
and why it doesn't bother him.
1:34I mean, if you're from here,
you kind of let it, uh, roll.
1:38I'm a lifelong resident of the city of Oswego.
1:40My name is Robert A. Corradino. I've
been mayor for almost two years.
1:44Mayor Corradino is pushing for
Oswego to get its fourth nuclear
1:47power plant largely because of the
economic benefits it would bring.
1:50Most people can say that they either
know somebody who works at the plant,
1:55plants, or they uh uh work there themselves.
1:59100 years ago or so, the city of Oswego was
a a huge port here on the Great Lake Ontario.
2:05This was a very busy area.
2:07A lot of jobs that were concentrated in industry
and manufacturing. And over the course of time,
2:12that's changed. Now, our nuclear industry
is our number one uh number one employer.
2:17I believe it's probably close to 3,000 employees.
2:21Nuclear power can be a godsend in
towns like Oswego. Not only does
2:24it provide jobs, it provides really good jobs.
2:27There's thousands of construction jobs
that will come with with each build.
2:31And then every 18 months or two years,
depending on reactor design, you bring
2:34in hundreds of specialized employees
to do the maintenance, the refueling.
2:38Patrick works for Holtech, a company
that designs and builds nuclear reactors.
2:42He tells me the average salary for workers
on these plants is around 100,000 a year.
2:47Compare those to the other jobs in most of those
2:49communities. Nuclear is always
going to be on the high end.
2:52And of course, no one would want that
in their own backyard. But again,
2:56uh it's it's a fact of life.
People can live wherever they
3:00want. This is a free society. It's like
anything, you know, you get used to it.
3:07It's crazy. You can just see the steam from the
water tower peeking out over all these houses,
3:12over all these trees. Feel like it
is important to note that is steam,
3:16not smoke. I feel like it
looks like a smoke stack,
3:19but that's a water cooling tower. So
that's steam coming out of the top.
3:24So that there is the water cooling
tower for Nine Mile Point Unit Two,
3:29one of the three nuclear power plants they've
had here in Oswego County since the 70s.
3:34And it's not unusual that these nuclear
reactors are so old. In fact, many of the
3:38US's nuclear reactors were built in the 60s
and 70s. Let's take a look at that history.
3:44After World War II, uh basically in the
aftermath of the use of nuclear weapons,
3:50there was this push to try to see could we
harness this immensely powerful force for peace.
3:55And so in the 60s and the 70s,
3:58we started seeing a proliferation of
nuclear reactors across the country.
4:03In that time frame, the risks of nuclear also
started to become more present in the public mind.
4:08You know, I think the Three Mile
Island incident in Pennsylvania,
4:11which triggered a partial reactor meltdown, that
kind of soured a lot of Americans on nuclear.
4:16So, as people got concerned about safety, more
regulations got imposed on nuclear power plants
4:20and they had to basically meet a higher bar for
construction and that started raising costs.
4:26Then in the 80s, one of the big things that
happened was that interest rates went up.
4:30The reason why that's a really big concern
4:32for nuclear is that nuclear
has very high upfront costs.
4:35What that means is that for nuclear energy
developers, they had to borrow money at a
4:39very high expensive rate from banks in order to
finance the construction of nuclear reactors.
4:44On top of the high interest rates, in 1986, the
Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded,
4:50which led to countless thousands
of deaths and changed the public
4:53imagination of nuclear power forever.
4:55And so basically around the 80s, nuclear reactor
construction in the United States stopped.
5:01The combination of high price and fear put the
US behind the rest of the world in nuclear power.
5:07For context, let's compare the US to France.
5:10In the US, nuclear makes up
20% of our energy source.
5:13In France, nuclear accounts for a whopping 70%.
5:17Another virtue for nuclear power
plants is that it tends to be on
5:20balance one of the safest sources of electricity.
5:23Statistically speaking, the chances of
nuclear disaster are actually quite slim.
5:28Working in nuclear is safer than working in coal,
5:30oil, or gas. That's because nuclear power plants
don't pollute the air like fossil fuel plants do,
5:35which makes it safer for the workers as
well as the residents who live in the area.
5:40Spending time in Oswego, it started
to feel like nuclear is a no-brainer,
5:44but I knew that wasn't the full picture.
5:46Of course, there are a lot of
reasons why the residents of a
5:48town like Oswego might not want
nuclear built in their backyard.
5:52For example, there are very
real environmental concerns,
5:54largely stemming from the issue of nuclear waste.
5:57Nuclear waste can stay hazardous for a very, very
long time, hundreds, if not thousands of years.
6:02Most nuclear waste is stored in dry casks
at the site of the nuclear power plant.
6:07This has been a fairly safe way
to store nuclear energy waste,
6:11but it's never intended to
be a permanent solution.
6:14In 2021, concerns around nuclear waste
and possible disasters pressured then
6:18Governor Andrew Cuomo to close Indian Point, a
nuclear power plant just outside New York City.
6:23If we ever had a major problem at Indian Point,
that might be a problem that we couldn't solve.
6:30Though, it's worth noting
that when Indian Point closed,
6:33the state replaced that energy output
with plants that burn natural gas.
6:38Now, I know it looks like it's just me out here,
6:40but reporting stories like
these takes a whole team.
6:42Editors, reporters, fact checkers, animators,
audio engineers, all working together to tell
6:47a story that's nuanced, accurate,
and more importantly, fun to watch.
6:52And, if high quality independent
journalism like this is important to you,
6:55then you would love our new
Vox community on Patreon.
6:58For just $6 a month, you'll have
a deeper and more direct way to
7:01experience our reporting and
connect with our journalists.
7:04And if you're a fan of our work, then you know
it takes time, care, and real resources. Plus,
7:08you'll get a sneak peek to see new
shows we're developing and a chance
7:12to tell producers like me what stories
you're interested in seeing more of.
7:15Now, back to the video.
7:17Nuclear power plants are sort of like Goldilocks.
7:19They require a very specific set of circumstances,
circumstances that do exist here in Oswego.
7:25You need to be close enough to a major city
or factories to send the electricity, but it
7:29needs to be isolated so that people feel safe and
the area is secure, but not too remote because
7:35you need to be near a desirable residential
area in order to draw long-term workforce.
7:39You need to be near highways in order to bring in
7:42construction materials and ideally near
existing electrical transmission lines.
7:46And finally, you need water, a lot of it.
7:49Nuclear power plants are very thirsty.
7:51You need to use a lot of water in order
to power the nuclear cycle. Basically,
7:56in order to boil the water to spin the turbine.
7:59Nuclear power plants also need a lot of water for
cooling and that also tends to be a limitation.
8:04So, there's a number of criteria that you
really are looking for for where to build
8:09a nuclear power plant and that drastically limits
the number of sites that are available to do so.
8:14So, all of this sets up Oswego really well. But
even if they're chosen for the site, there's a
8:19really long road ahead before they can flip the
switch and start putting energy into the grid.
8:23Once New York State chooses the site, they
might not even start building until 2033.
8:27And many folks upstate have pushed
back against Hochul's addition of a
8:31new nuclear plant. They cite issues
of danger and cost. Increasingly,
8:34the the objection by environmental groups
is just that nuclear is very expensive.
8:40Basically, if you want to build a
nuclear power plant, you need to
8:42have tens of billions of dollars ready and you
may have to wait a decade or more before you
8:48start generating power before you actually
start seeing a return on your investment.
8:51And the big question, how long will it
take and how over budget will it be?
8:56Depending on the size of reactor, 5 to 10 years
is is probably a reasonable construction time.
9:00You already have an infrastructure. You
9:02already have an educated community and
workforce. Like those are huge pieces.
9:06Um I think to cut down on some of these
timelines in 5 to 10 years would be quick.
9:11The most recent nuclear power plant built
in the US was Vogle in Georgia which was
9:15completed after 15 years. It was 7 years behind
schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
9:21The problem is because we haven't
been steadily building nuclear
9:24power plants for a long time that
workforce has started to decline.
9:30And so there's sort of a chicken and
egg problem here where, you know,
9:33you don't have a huge industry that's ready to
hire a whole bunch of nuclear energy engineers,
9:38but that's because they don't have a huge
workforce to staff these uh power plants
9:42and you don't see a huge demand for these new
power plants and it's getting more expensive
9:46because you have to invest so much in training
people to build and operate these power plants.
9:52So even if everything goes well, it's
probably at least a decade until Oswego
9:56gets that new nuclear power plant. But for
them, it could really be worth the headache.
10:00I'm not a nuclear energy expert, but uh number
one, I think uh there's a need for that in New
10:06York State, especially our power grid because
of the demands on it in the next few years.
10:11All the data centers that they're proposing
for New York State. The AI, I think,
10:16uh there's going to be a huge need for that
and as I said, uh we could use uh jobs here
10:20in our area and there are ways to make the
process of building nuclear quicker and easier.
10:24With existing facilities, you've
kind of already jumped through
10:27all the hoops that you would need to
do to build a nuclear power plant.
10:31Which is why the Department of Energy
announced that they would be giving a
10:34loan to help restart the reactor at Three Mile
Island at the site of the famous 1979 meltdown.
10:40This is a site that already exists.
It's already zoned as an industrial
10:43site. It already has the infrastructure that was
needed to build the plant in the first place.
10:49there's there's potential in restarts, but
again, there's only so many plants, I think,
10:52that are even in a condition
um or in the space to restart.
10:56Another way of building nuclear more efficiently
is through small modular reactors or SMRs.
11:01So, one of the problems with nuclear is that
we were doing customized designs for every
11:05facility. With small modular reactors, you're
building one standardized design and you're
11:11building it at a factory. You get you get the
same benefits of basically mass production.
11:16Ultimately, this is part of a much larger
question about infrastructure in the US
11:20because if we want to prevent climate change
and keep using AI, well, it's going to require
11:25some kind of large scale infrastructure,
whether it's nuclear or something else.
11:29Any way you slice it, we're going to have
to replace a lot of the existing power
11:33infrastructure with clean infrastructure.
That's going to cost a lot of money. That's
11:37going to take a lot of time. And to
date, the United States does not have
11:40a good track record of delivering
big projects on time and on budget.
11:44On the other hand, if we can get through this red
tape, we can actually tackle climate change at
11:50the scale that we need to in order to meet
the targets that we've set for ourselves.
11:55Thanks for sticking around.
11:56If you keep watching, you'll see a
sneak preview for What's Working,
11:59a new Patreon exclusive Vox
series that uncovers creative
12:03policy solutions that are improving the
lives of Americans around the country.
12:11In the last 30 years, the average price of 4-year
12:14public and private college
tuition has nearly doubled.
12:18Along with it, federal student loan
debt has skyrocketed to $1.8 trillion.
12:24And you've probably heard
a lot of buzzy solutions.
12:27President Obama unveiled the goal of
a nation where everyone has not only
12:31the chance, but also the means to go to college.
12:34Essentially, get the first half of
their bachelor's degree for free.
12:38Tuition-free attendance.
12:43And the free college movement
has become more than just talk.
12:46Many Americans agree that free college is a good
idea. The left loves to talk about free college,
12:53but I was surprised to find
out that it was actually a
12:55red state that was the first to launch
a statewide program in the modern era.
12:59So, what's working about
free college in Tennessee?
13:02Let's crank up the country music and head south.
