It's the Brian Lair Show on WNYC.

I'm Bridget Bergen, senior reporter in the WNYC in Gothamist Newsroom filling in for Brian today.

Now for the Health and Climate Tuesday section of the show today, this announcement

by Governor Hockel last week. I'm directing the New York State Power Authority to develop

and construct a brand new advanced nuclear plant in upstate New York. New York is struggling to

meet its targets for clean energy.

So is nuclear power the answer?

To talk more about the context for this announcement in the current pros and cons of nuclear

power, we're joined by New York Times reporter Patrick McGeehan, who covers the infrastructure

of New York City and the surrounding area.

Patrick, welcome back to the show.

Well, thanks for having me. Now, Patrick, how much do we know about what Governor Hokel has in mind as to this,

the capacity and location of this new plant she wants to build? Well, we don't know anything about the

location yet. That hasn't been determined, but we do know that she's looking to add one gigawatt of nuclear power, which would be enough, roughly enough, to power about a million homes in the state.

Wow. She was still lieutenant governor when Andrew Cuomo started the process of shutting down the Indian Point nuclear power plant in 2021, which is some 30-odd miles up the Hudson from New York City.

By comparison, how much power did it produce and what's replaced it?

Yeah, this does seem like a 180- degree reversal here for people who haven't been following

this too closely because Indian Point was twice as big as what she's proposing here.

It produced about two gigawatts of power, most of which went into the New York City metro

area because the plant was in the downstate area so close to the city.

And now we were looking at something that would be upstate, so the power would basically be consumed upstate,

and it wouldn't really help the problem that New York, that lower New York has,

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