ALBANY — New York is on track for a power surge, and it’s likely to be atomic.

Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul is putting serious effort into bringing the next generation of nuclear power technology into New York, directing the state power authority to build up 1 gigawatt of power with a public-private partnership, and this year announced another major project, the Nuclear Reliability Backbone initiative.

As outlined in her State of the State agenda earlier this month, Hochul wants the state Department of Public Service, which regulates utilities, to craft a new process for considering, reviewing and implementing up to 4 gigawatts of new nuclear power capacity, on top of the 1 gigawatt already in the works. Combined with the existing nuclear plants in Oswego and Warren counties, the goal is to achieve 8.4 gigawatts of nuclear energy capacity across the state — enough to power millions of homes. At peak consumption times in the summer, New York draws about 33 gigawatts in total.

Combined with the regulatory program, Hochul is planning to build an advanced jobs program, Nuclear New York, to get in-state residents ready to build and operate the next generation of nuclear power plants.

The plan also relies on next-generation nuclear proving to be stable, cost-efficient and standardizable. The governor has repeatedly pointed to small, modular nuclear reactors as a key part of the plan, although the plans laid out now account for both large-scale and small-scale facilities. Hochul seems bullish on the future of small modular reactors.

“What we have today is not your grandma’s nuclear plants,” she said in response to a question from the Watertown Daily Times earlier this month. “The advanced technology of these facilities is quite extraordinary.”

There are a wide variety of approaches to small modular reactors, with dozens of companies operating in the space. Most of the technology is still in development, with a few projects underway internationally. There are no operating small modular reactors in the United States, although the federal government is pushing a program to see experimental reactors developed this year.

The Department of Public Service is working with the New York Power Authority on a public-private partnership, as well as the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority on a broader “master plan” for new nuclear plants.

James Denn, spokesperson for the Department of Public Service, said in a statement that the department is also working on Hochul’s push for 4 gigawatts of new nuclear. Much of the work now lies with the Public Service Commission, which is within the department and directly regulates electric, gas, water and telecommunications utilities.

“Further details on how this new target will be achieved will be developed through a Commission proceeding where all stakeholders will have an opportunity to provide input on the best pathway to realize this goal,” Denn said. “This action builds on two Commission proceedings — Zero Emissions by 2040 and Clean Energy Standard — that are investigating the role of zero-emissions resources like advanced nuclear.”

Those proceedings are existing Commission projects where the state engages with research, development, private entities and utilities to promote clean energy and a fully decarbonized electric grid by 2040.

There’s no price tag on New York’s nuclear plans yet. The public-private partnership with the New York Power Authority is still being developed, with NYPA dedicating $40 million in new annual funding over four years for workforce development for the project. Officials haven’t yet made any decisions on which designs and contractors to use or where to build these facilities. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that initial construction cost for a new reactor is about $5,339 per kilowatt of capacity, about $5.3 billion per gigawatt.

The cost is what has worried some advocates across New York. As the details of Hochul’s plans were explained, many groups that advocate for cheaper, cleaner energy said this plan won’t make that happen.

Public Power NY, a coalition of advocacy groups united in their call for public, state ownership of power plants and delivery wires, said they predict this plan will drive consumer power bills even higher.

“If a governor wanted to make it as hard for New Yorkers’ to afford our energy bills as possible, their plan would look like Kathy Hochul’s,” the group said in a statement. “Dropping gigawatts worth of affordable and reliable public renewables while pushing gigawatts of the costliest and least likely to get built form of energy possible is just another way to enrich wealthy corporations at the expense of our wallets and futures. Hochul should fund public renewables, not engineer her own private energy crisis.”

Public Power NY, and many other groups, believe that the solution to New York’s energy needs is in renewable energy — wind turbines and solar panels primarily. Public Power wants Hochul to instead put $200 million into building publicly owned renewable energy farms and to build 15 gigawatts of solar and wind capacity instead.

They argue that nuclear will take too long, requires too much up-front investment, and is too reliant on regulations and changing attitudes.

Grassroots Environmental Education, with its Forums for a Nuclear-Free New York, makes the case that nuclear developments, even the new designs, are dangerous. They enlisted Alec Baldwin, the Long Island resident and actor who has long advocated against nuclear energy use. Baldwin was among the more prominent figures in the push to shut down Indian Point, the nuclear installation in Westchester County that was shuttered in 2021.

“Proposed rapid nuclear expansion is a clear and present danger in New York and other states,” Baldwin said in a virtual meeting hosted by Grassroots on Jan. 15. “It would be taking place amid unprecedented federal dismantling of nuclear regulations, rubber stamping of new nuclear projects and dumbing down of federal radiation exposure standards.”

Grassroots cites a study published by Harvard University researchers in the school’s Department of Environmental Health that found a connection between living near an operating nuclear power plant and increased rates of cancer.

Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering Mark Z. Jacobson is a prominent anti-nuclear voice who joined Grassroots and Baldwin. He has published more than 100 studies and a few books calling for renewable energy investments to decarbonize the power grid, and argues that nuclear power plants are not the best option to avoid releasing carbon into the environment. He argues nuclear is obsolete compared to geothermal energy.

“There’s a direct alternative that does the exact same thing as nuclear, it takes less land, can be put up quicker, is less expensive and does not have the risks and dangers associated with it — that’s advanced geothermal,” he said.

Hochul doesn’t seem swayed by these arguments, and is is supportive of federal efforts to scale back nuclear regulations to speed up development. She has said she is pushing President Donald J. Trump to speed up the regulatory review process at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“My first meeting with the White House with him,, last February, I said let’s get this done,” she said. “I said, of the 10-year length of time it takes to get nuclear approved, about seven of those years are at the federal level.”

Hochul quipped that she would have liked to see the controversial government efficiency operation run by Elon Musk last year, DOGE, focus on making the federal review process more efficient and faster.

“I said, why don’t you send Elon Musk and the DOGE boys over there to see what can be streamlined, but again, not compromising safety,” she said. “So I’m glad to see the federal government is making some progress in that space. We don’t have a lot of choices.”

James Walker, CEO of NANO Nuclear Energy and a nuclear physicist and engineer who has worked with the U.K. Ministry of Defence, said that even changes to the federal regulatory environment now wouldn’t make much of a difference for his company. NANO is one of 23 companies to express interest in working with NYPA on the 1-gigawatt nuclear project. The company has three designs for portable or stationary microreactors, and has solutions for nuclear fuel management. They’re interested in space-based projects as well as terrestrial ones.

Walker said NANO has projects entering the construction phase soon, with site prep work being done now. He said they expect to have finished reactors by 2030.

“Our timelines have always remained very fixed,” he said in an interview Friday. “We were always very conservative with what we were estimating.”

Walker said the nuclear energy industry is expanding rapidly to meet the expected demand for power that’s been projected for the coming decades. As advanced manufacturing centers come online, like Micron in Onondaga County, and data centers to run generative artificial intelligence start running, demand for power is projected to skyrocket in the next 10 years, more than doubling for some states and regions.

“Within the competitive industry that’s emerging in response to this enormous energy demand, some projections for these deployments that are very ambitious, if they’re not really predicated on anything realistic, could upset people’s impression of how realistically these things can be deployed in reasonable timelines,” he said.

Walker said that the question of cost is more complex than it may appear. While nuclear plants are expensive to build, they’re currently in competition with extraordinarily cheap alternatives.

“Gas is cheap in the U.S. right now,” he said. “If you’ve got a lot of gas then great, you’ve got a cheap source of power. But the problem is, there’s a difficulty in bringing new gas online.”

Walker said that contractors who can build gas turbines are booked until the early 2030s with projects to build new gas power plants, and demand is clearly outpacing capacity there. As the U.S. moves away from fossil fuels, they’re like to get more costly.

“It’s very likely that by about 2030, gas prices could be twice what they are now,” he said.

NANO’s approach to nuclear, which is similar to other microreactor companies, makes the whole process a lot cheaper as it starts to take off. Microreactors can be manufactured in a standardized way. Standardizing parts and building steps, plus securing safety approvals that cover all reactors of the same design, will greatly cut costs, he said.

“If you deploy one of our reactor systems, it’s going to be expensive,” he said. “But if you deploy 20, 30, 40, you can start getting economies of scale very quickly.”

He noted that these reactors won’t have consistent fuel costs to worry about, as they’re installed with the fuel they’ll need for many years of operation, meaning that their costs will stay the same while fossil fuel plants will have price spikes to contend with.

There are many things left to be done to achieve the Hochul’s goals of expanding New York’s nuclear capacity, and barriers still to overcome. Opponents of nuclear power have their allies in the state legislature, and Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie, D-Yonkers, said he projects some Democratic members will be vocal on the issue.

“We haven’t talked about it, but there were some members of the conference who supported the closure of Indian Point,” Heastie said. “So nuclear energy will be another robust discussion within the conference.”