NY lawmakers letter to PSC Re Gov. Hochul Administration push for nuclear expansion (Sep 24 2026)

LETTER

September 24, 2026

Kathy Hochul 

Governor of New York State 

Capitol Building 

Albany, NY 12224

Rory M. Christian, Chair and CEO 

Michelle L. Phillips, Secretary to the Commission 

New York State Public Service Commission Empire State Plaza 

Agency Building 3 

Albany, New York 12223-1350

Doreen M. Harris 

President and CEO 

New York State Energy Research and Development Authority 

17 Columbia Circle 

Albany, NY 12203-6399

RE: Proceeding on Motion of the Commission to Implement a Nuclear Reliability Backbone, Case Number 26-E-0335

Dear Governor Hochul, Chair Christian, President Harris, and Secretary Phillips: 

We write to oppose the use of any taxpayer or ratepayer subsidies to support the construction of new nuclear power plants in New York, as proposed in the Advanced Nuclear Policy Options paper published on June 12th, 2026, by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the Department of Public Service1

Nuclear power is the most expensive form of new energy. The Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island cost roughly 85 times its original estimate and left Long Islanders with some of the highest utility bills in the country when most of the $6 billion cost of the facility was passed along to local ratepayers after it was decommissioned due to public backlash over safety concerns2. The Vogtle Plant Units 3 and 4 in Georgia are the most recent nuclear generators built in the United States, the first in 30 years. That 2GW facility took 15 years to build, 7 years longer than planned3, at a cost of $36.8 billion, more than double the original cost estimate of $14 billion4. The exorbitant cost of this new nuclear generation led to a nearly 25% rate increase for Georgia Power customers5. By comparison, over just the past four years the state of Texas has built 30GW of solar and 6GW of storage for roughly the same cost6.

If construction of new nuclear generation in New York follows anything like a similar path to the most recent precedent in the United States, it will not only lead to unacceptable cost burdens for ratepayers and taxpayers, but will also arrive over a decade later than needed to address current near-term generation capacity needs. As a recent analysis of the New York State Energy Plan by Dr. Joseph Romm of the University of Pennsylvania7 pointed out, at a time when data centers are the largest driver of new electricity demand, “ironically, new reactors are the only option that worsens the affordability problem but can’t be built fast enough to address the AI data center demand crisis.”8 The same analysis also finds that small modular reactors lead to even higher costs per unit of energy than large facilities like Vogtle, and that the cost to develop new reactors does not benefit from learning reductions, but has become more expensive, not less, as more generating capacity has been developed.

In addition to being very expensive and taking a very long time to build, nuclear power is toxic and dangerous, generating massive quantities of hazardous waste and radioactive pollution while threatening catastrophic accidents. 84 years after the world’s first nuclear reactor was built in the U.S., there is still no solution for safe long-term disposal of the intensely radioactive and long-lived nuclear waste that reactors produce. All that waste will remain a danger to New Yorkers, our environment, and our drinking water for many generations into the future.

The options for state financial support proposed in the Policy Options paper include adding enormous surcharges to utility bills, providing taxpayer-funded construction grants, investing public money directly into nuclear reactors, and using public money to provide cost-overrun guarantees. The Public Service Commission estimates that these subsidies could total $23.9 billion, which is very likely an underestimate based on the industry’s track record. These costs would be on top of the recently approved $33 billion ZEC subsidy program to keep New York’s four existing nuclear reactors operating through 2049. Any of these options would burden New Yorkers with higher electric bills while taking on the risk of paying for cost overruns that history suggests are highly probable.

New York taxpayers and ratepayers are not a bottomless ATM machine for the nuclear industry. The extraordinary subsidies the PSC has authorized for nuclear power vastly overshadow spending on far more affordable and rapidly deployable clean options.

Rather than devoting financial resources to environmentally destructive, expensive, and slow-to-build nuclear schemes, we should be investing in proven, affordable solutions like wind, solar, storage, thermal energy, energy efficiency, demand response, and any number of other technologies and policies that can meet our needs more quickly and at lower cost to ratepayers and taxpayers.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely

Liz Krueger

28^th Senate District

Jo Anne Simon

52^nd Assembly District

Jabari Brisport

25^th Senate District

Cordell Cleare

30^th Senate District

Leroy Comrie

14^th Senate District

Kristen Gonzalez

59^th Senate District

Robert Jackson

31^st Senate District

Kevin Parker

21^st Senate District 

Roxanne J. Persaud

19^th Senate District

Gustavo Rivera

33^rd Senate District

Julia Salazar

18^th Senate District

Jose M. Serrano

29^th Senate District

Khaleel M. Anderson

31^st Assembly District

Chris Burdick

93^rd Assembly District

Catalina Cruz

39^th Assembly District

Martiza Davila

53^rd Assembly District

Manny De Los Santos

72^nd Assembly District

Phara Souffrant Forrest

57^th Assembly District

Emily Gallagher

50^th Assembly District

Deborah J. Glick

66^th Assembly District

Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas

34^th Assembly District

Andrew Hevesi 

28^th Assembly District

Anna R. Kelles, PhD

125^th Assembly District

Marcela Mitaynes

51^st Assembly District

Steven Raga

30^th Assembly District

Linda B. Rosenthal

67^th Assembly District

Grace Lee  

65^th Assembly District 

Dana Levenberg

95^th Assembly District

Diana Moreno

36^th Assembly District

Mary Jane Shimsky

92^nd Assembly District

Sarahana Shrestha

103^rd Assembly District

Phil Steck

110^th  Assembly District

Yudelka Tapia

86^th Assembly District

Claire Valdez

37^th Assembly District

Phil Ramos

6^th Assembly District

FN 1 https://documents.dps.ny.gov/public/Common/ViewDoc.aspx?DocRefId=%7b0022BC9E-0000-CC34-A022-DD74AF1E199A%7d&DocTitle=2026%20NY%20Advanced%20Nuclear%20Policy%20Options%20Paper

FN 2 https://web.archive.org/web/20071201005429/http:/www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-hs9shore,0,563942.story

FN 3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant

FN 4

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61963. 

FN 5

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/after-2-years-ratepayer-pain-political-fallout-georgia-nuclear-vogtle/817792/. 

FN6

Ibid

FN7

https://www.nyiso.com/documents/20142/2223020/2025-Power-Trends.pdf/51517a1b-36fa-4f3d-d44d-eabe23598514. 

FN8

https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/web.sas.upenn.edu/dist/0/896/files/2026/01/NY-Nuclear-Report-1-8-26-FINAL.pdf

GABI Brief - Project Power: A New U.S.–Korea Nuclear Partnership

The Korean APR 1400 appears to be a worthy partner to the U.S. nuclear industry - repeatedly overly optimistic schedule estimates combined with years of overruns.

The dates listed for each unit are the years in which first concrete placement was started. Six of the reactors are in Korea. The other four were built by the Koreans in the UAE.

Two main points stand out: (1) the actual schedules are much longer than the projected and (2) there doesn't appear to be much of a positive learning curve.

David

Project Power: A New U.S.–Korea Nuclear Partnership October 1, 2026 By Global America Business Institute Project Power marks a potentially significant expansion of U.S.–Korea nuclear cooperation, combining U.S. reactor technology and market opportunities with Korea’s investment, manufacturing, engineering, and construction capabilities. The framework envisions up to eight large reactors, including both Westinghouse AP1000 and Korean APR1400 units, while opening the door to deeper industrial and supply-chain integration. Its success, however, will depend on resolving financing, regulatory, site, and commercial issues before the projects can move into construction. Global America Business Institute | www.thegabi.com

New England governors host nuclear summit to beat a dead horse

Today's revealing CT Mirror OpEd  on Massachusetts Governor Healey's invitation to a delusional "summit" of New England governors to resurrect "Small Mirage Nuclear Reactors."  It's being framed under the guise of powering AI data centers. The Clamshell Alliance and Citizen Awareness Network hosted a "reception protest" outside of the University of Massachusetts/Lowell venue hosted by the UMass Lowell nuclear engineering school. 

https://ctmirror.org/2026/09/30/a-reckless-drive-for-more-nuclear-power/

--
Paul Gunter, Director
Reactor Oversight Project
Beyond Nuclear

A utility scale geothermal plant goes live

In global first, a next-gen geothermal plant goes live at utility scale | Canary Media https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/geothermal/global-first-next-gen-geothermal-fervo

With the first unit online, Fervo said it is working to commission two more 33-MWpower blocks by Jan. 1, 2027. The project’s remaining 400 MW — which is supported by a new agreement with Google — is under construction and slated to come online in  

San Onofre dumps tritium laced water into the Pacific

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/a-shuttered-california-nuclear-plant-sends-tritium-laced-water-toward-the-pacific/ar-AA2d3D7J

A shuttered California nuclear plant sends tritium-laced water toward the Pacific

Story by Everett Sloane

• 1d •

4 min read

About 5,000 gallons of tritium-laced wastewater flowed into a storm drain pathway toward the Pacific Ocean at the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station on Sept. 23, 2026, after a routine wastewater transfer ran well past its planned stop time. Southern California Edison detected tritium in the water at roughly 3,000 picocuries per liter, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission logged the release the next day as a non-emergency event.

San Onofre stopped generating electricity more than a decade ago. What happened this week is a decommissioning-site accident, not a reactor incident, and it went to federal regulators through the same event-reporting system that tracks routine problems at retired plants across the country. Tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, is a routine byproduct of nuclear plant operations and shows up in low concentrations in groundwater and cooling-system water long after a reactor stops running.

A wastewater transfer that ran past its stop time

Southern California Edison told the NRC that a planned transfer of mostly groundwater and concrete-cutting water continued between roughly 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Pacific time on Sept. 23 after it should have stopped, sending the excess into the plant’s Unit 2 storm drain and intake conduit rather than completing the discharge path the company had planned to use. The utility notified the NRC’s event notification system the following afternoon, citing an earlier notice it had already made to the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.

That sequencing matters under federal rules: NRC licensees report certain events to the agency once a separate regulator has already been told, rather than as the first call. Southern California Edison’s report reached the NRC at 2:57 p.m. Pacific time on Sept. 24, roughly a day after the discharge itself, and identified the pathway as leading from the Unit 2 conduit toward the ocean near San Onofre State Beach, on the San Diego County line in San Clemente.

Tritium at 3,000 picocuries, and a pH that broke the site’s own limit

The 3,000 picocuries-per-liter tritium reading is far below the EPA’s 20,000 picocurie-per-liter limit for drinking water, but the discharge broke a separate threshold: its pH measured 10.6, above the permit limit of 9 set for water leaving the site. Total suspended solids came in at 16 milligrams per liter, and results for oil and grease were still pending when the report was filed.

Wastewater leaving a nuclear site into public waters is governed by discharge permits the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board issues under the same National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System framework that covers ordinary industrial dischargers, not by NRC radiological limits alone. A pH violation on its own is a permit matter; combined with an off-path release of tritiated water, it drew reports to both agencies at once.

Thirteen years into a decommissioning that won’t finish until 2051

San Onofre’s two working reactors, Units 2 and 3, went online in the 1980s and supplied power alongside an older Unit 1 that dates the site’s operating history back to 1968. Southern California Edison permanently retired the plant on June 7, 2013, after replacement steam generators installed a year earlier developed unusual wear that the utility ultimately judged too costly to fix.

The site has been in an active dismantlement phase, known as DECON, ever since, according to the NRC’s decommissioning tracker for the site. Spent fuel finished moving into an underground dry-storage system on Aug. 6, 2020, and the NRC’s timeline calls for the site to reach unrestricted use by 2028, with full decommissioning — the point at which SCE’s oversight ends entirely — projected for 2051.

Southern California Edison says the release posed no threat

“Based on these preliminary analytical results and currently available information, Southern California Edison does not believe the release poses a threat to ocean water quality,” the utility told the NRC in its report on the Sept. 23 discharge. The agency’s own classification — non-emergency — reflects the same read: no evacuation, no public health order, no operating reactor involved.

It is not the only time SCE has had to explain an unplanned wastewater release at San Onofre. A 2020 discharge from the site’s sewage treatment plant, which sent partially treated wastewater more than a mile offshore after dilution problems, drew a sharper company response at the time: SCE called that earlier incident “unacceptable” and said it was reviewing whether its own procedures had failed to prevent it. Six years later, with the plant a third of the way through a 38-year decommissioning that has already outlasted its final decade of power generation, wastewater controls at the site remain the recurring weak point regulators keep coming back to.

Neither agency has said whether the Sept. 23 release will trigger a fine or a corrective-action order. The NRC’s report leaves that determination for later review, and Southern California Edison’s decommissioning timeline continues on the same schedule regardless — spent fuel stays in dry storage on site for decades longer than the reactors themselves ever ran.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

 https://iceberg-research.com/2026/09/24/deep-fission-fisn-a-money-pit/

Deep Fission ($FISN): a Money Pit

September 24, 2026

Please refer to our disclaimer at the bottom of the report.

Main findings

• Nasdaq-listed Deep Fission (FISN) is developing a small modular reactor (SMR) with a capacity of 5MWe-15MWe. The company plans to bury a miniature version of the widely used pressurized water reactor (PWR) one mile deep, inside a 40-60-inch water-filled borehole drilled into hard rock. 

• Like other SMR developers, FISN pitches itself as an AI data-center power solution. But data centers have turned to natural gas to accelerate deployment. Almost all of the roughly 75GW of booked data center on-site generation is natural gas-based. FISN has no regulatory approval and remains years away from commercialization.

• Before its June 2026 IPO, FISN guided to a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of just $50-70/MWh. Then the company dropped the reference. Using figures disclosed in its June 2026 prospectus, we calculate an LCOE of $289/MWh for the first-of-a-kind (FOAK) reactor and $148/MWh for the nth-of-a-kind (NOAK) reactor, about 200% above prior guidance. This is not competitive with behind-the-meter gas solutions.

• Even this NOAK estimate is too optimistic, as capital cost is understated. Using figures from independent third parties, we estimate NOAK capital cost to be $112mn, 34% above FISN’s estimate, raising our estimated NOAK LCOE to $170/MWh. 

• FISN claims it can secure Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approval in less than a year. Yet it has already struggled with the less demanding Department of Energy (DOE) process, missing the program deadline while at least four peers have already completed it. Even if NRC approved, commercialization is far from assured: NuScale, which has a much more conventional design, has yet to sell a reactor three years after receiving its NRC license.

• FISN targets deploying its reactor in just six months versus 3-4 years for other advanced SMRs, citing fewer safety-related systems. Yet its own filing states a two-year development timeline. Peers pursue the same simplification strategy, but FISN adds a major step: drilling a one-mile borehole.

• FISN touts the industry’s largest customer pipeline. Most counterparties are undisclosed. Of those identified, one is an undeveloped industrial park with doubtful demand for a nuclear reactor. The other two (Endeavour Energy and Blue Owl) have signed only non-binding agreements. 

• FISN has less than twelve months of cash runway and faces ~$350mn of unfunded capital needs, potentially implying ~43% dilution to its existing shareholders. At the same time, the competition for SMR funding is intensifying: publicly traded SMR names have risen from three before October 2025 to nine today, with three more coming to the market, including a far more established player, Westinghouse.

• FISN is largely a repackaging of the founders’ prior venture, Deep Isolation, a deep-borehole nuclear waste disposal company that has failed to commercialize its concept after a decade.

Background and bull case

Deep Fission (NASDAQ: FISN) is a California-headquartered company founded in 2023. The company is developing a nuclear reactor called Gravity. The reactor is intended to be a miniature version of the conventional pressurized water reactor (PWR), using low-enriched uranium (LEU) as fuel. The company’s key innovation is that its reactor would be buried in a 40-60-inch water-filled borehole one mile (~1.6 km) underground. The reactor is designed with a power generation capacity of 5–15MWe.

Source: Deep Fission

Management claims that its reactor is cheaper to build because its innovative borehole design eliminates certain components required in above-ground PWR reactors. For example, the depth and surrounding geology provide natural containment, potentially eliminating the need for the reinforced concrete and steel containment structures typical of above-ground reactors.

FISN was founded by Richard Muller, a UC Berkeley physics professor, and his daughter Elizabeth, who serve as CTO and CEO of the company, respectively. The company became an unquoted public company in September 2025 through a reverse merger with shell company Surfside Acquisition, before listing on Nasdaq in June 2026.

FISN is participating in the Department of Energy’s (DOE) pilot reactor program. The company is seeking DOE authorization to build a pilot reactor at a site in Parsons, Kansas, by 1H 2027. Then, FISN plans to submit license applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to convert the pilot reactor into a commercial facility by the end of 2027, with high-volume deployment targeted to begin in 2028. Because its reactor is based on well-established PWR technology, its licensing pathway would be simpler than for novel advanced reactor designs. 

The company claims that its reactor can then be commercially deployed in as little as six months, compared with three to four years for other small modular reactors (SMR). 

FISN expects the surge in power demand from AI data centers will drive demand for its reactors and claims the largest pipeline of potential customers, representing 18.5GW of prospective capacity.

It’s time for small modular reactor supporters to admit it: natural gas, not SMRs, is the undisputed winner of the AI data center build-out

In early 2024, the market realized that AI would consume enormous amounts of energy. This kicked off a trading frenzy from conventional nuclear, to gas-turbine manufacturers, to the speculative (and often sketchy) SMR companies. Every player, including the most exotic concept, was supposed to win.

Fast forward two years, and the verdict is in. Gas-fired generation is the clear preferred solution for powering AI infrastructure. Data centers have booked 75GW of onsite generation capacity so far. Almost all of them will rely on natural gas.

Source: Semianalysis

While the largest and most efficient combined-cycle gas turbines face multi-year lead times, data centers have turned to smaller engines or aeroderivatives with lead times as short as twelve months. Gas generation is a proven technology and can meet AI power demand quickly, with the added advantage of cheap natural gas in the US. SMRs, on the other hand, sit at exactly the opposite end of the spectrum: they remain unproven, with commercialization not expected before the 2030s. 

The political environment has also become more favorable to fossil-fuel-based generation, removing one of the key roadblocks to new gas development.

Read more

Google invests in Vogtle - oy vey - Sklar

 

Google is investing $900M to boost Georgia Power’s nuclear capacity.

• The goal: To fund upgrades that will raise the max power output of plants Vogtle and Hatch, adding 96 MW to Georgia's grid. The enhancements will also extend the life of the units and “help Georgia Power customers receive even more value from the existing nuclear fleet,” Joshua Peacock, communications lead at Georgia Power, told us. 

• A new structure: Google would make monthly payments under a proposed Georgia Power tariff and receive zero-emission credits in return. The value of those credits would be defined in a contract between the utility and data center customers. 

• The impact on bills: Georgia Power froze its base rates through 2028, and intends to ask the PSC to lower the base rates again in the future, according to Peacock. The utility has been able to keep its rates steady “because of all of the growth and revenue coming in from large energy users like Google,” he said.