Five years after the last reactor at Indian Point shut down, the nuclear ghost on the Hudson refuses to rest. Holtec International, the company tasked with dismantling the 60-year-old plant, has announced that the facility could be brought back to life — for a staggering $10 billion.
The proposal dropped like a stone in New York’s energy debate. Holtec’s president Kelly Trice told Politico that repowering the two gigawatt plant was technically possible. All it would take is money, political will, and the suspension of collective memory about why the state fought so hard to close Indian Point in the first place.
Holtec’s pitch arrives at a convenient political moment. Governor Kathy Hochul has opened the door to “new nuclear” projects upstate. President Donald Trump has made nuclear energy a centerpiece of his second-term energy strategy after kneecapping offshore wind and cutting federal support for solar. Holtec sees an opportunity: sell nuclear as the only path to stable power for New York City, where demand is climbing and affordability is in crisis.
Union leaders, who lost hundreds of jobs when Indian Point closed in 2021, echoed the company’s call. “It should never have been shut down in the first place,” said Frank Morales of the Utility Workers Union Local 1-2.
But behind the nostalgia and political theater lies a darker truth. Indian Point did not close because of bad planning or ideology. It closed because the plant was unsafe, uneconomic, and a ticking time bomb perched just 35 miles from midtown Manhattan.
Former Governor Andrew Cuomo struck the 2017 deal to shut down Indian Point’s two remaining reactors. His reasons were simple:
Safety risks. Indian Point sits on a fault line and in the heart of the country’s most densely populated region. A serious accident would put more than 20 million people at risk. The plant’s aging infrastructure raised alarms among engineers and regulators.
Environmental impacts. The plant sucked billions of gallons of water daily from the Hudson River for cooling, killing fish and other aquatic life. Riverkeeper documented decades of violations and pollution events.
Security concerns. After 9/11, the proximity of Indian Point to New York City made it a prime terrorist target. Evacuation plans were unrealistic.
Economics. Even before closure, Indian Point struggled to compete with cheaper gas and renewables. Subsidies kept it afloat, but only barely.
Cuomo’s decision was widely celebrated by environmental groups and local residents. But today, Holtec and its allies are working to rewrite that history.
Holtec estimates restarting Indian Point would cost $10 billion and take four years. The company claims this equates to about $4,800 per kilowatt, cheaper than the recently finished Vogtle nuclear project in Georgia, which ballooned to $14,000 per kilowatt after years of delays and scandals Bloomberg.
Even so, the numbers don’t add up. Nuclear power remains one of the most expensive ways to generate electricity. By comparison, Lazard’s 2023 levelized cost of energy analysis put solar and wind at less than half the cost of new nuclear Lazard. Storage prices are also falling, making renewables plus batteries cheaper and faster to deploy than nuclear.
Holtec’s “cost competitive” claim relies on government subsidies, long-term guaranteed contracts, and ratepayer bailouts. Without them, no private investor would risk the billions required to gamble on a half-dismantled plant.
Holtec’s Trice admits the core internals of Indian Point have already been removed. The reactor vessel has been disassembled. Contaminated water is stored on site because the company was barred by state law from dumping it into the Hudson. Restarting would require ordering new reactor components, reinstalling them in containment structures built in the 1960s, and persuading regulators to sign off.
“It is conceivable,” Trice said. Conceivable, yes. Sensible, no.
Holtec points to its restart of the Palisades plant in Michigan, funded by a $1.5 billion federal loan. Constellation Energy is working to revive part of Three Mile Island, site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, to power Microsoft’s data centers. NextEra is studying an Iowa restart.
These projects expose the pattern: corporate bailouts and tech-sector demand for constant electricity create political cover to pour billions into old reactors instead of new clean energy. The public pays. Private companies profit.
Holtec promises “thousands of jobs” if Indian Point reopens. Politicians salivate at that kind of number. Yet history shows nuclear jobs are temporary, expensive, and often replaceable by clean energy employment. Studies by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory show that solar, wind, and efficiency projects create far more jobs per dollar invested than nuclear.
What communities really need are permanent, unionized jobs in renewable generation, storage, grid upgrades, and building electrification. That work lasts decades and reduces bills instead of raising them.
Indian Point sits in Westchester County, upriver from the Bronx. For decades, working-class communities bore the brunt of its pollution and risk. The Hudson River has long been treated as an industrial dumping ground, from General Electric’s PCBs to Indian Point’s radioactive wastewater.
Holtec’s plan would prolong that injustice. The company has already tried to discharge contaminated water into the river during decommissioning, sparking outrage until Hochul signed a law blocking it in 2023 NY Times. Holtec is now suing to overturn that law.
Restarting Indian Point would mean more radioactive waste stored on site with no permanent disposal plan. The U.S. has failed for decades to open a national waste repository. Instead, waste piles up at local plants, often near low-income communities.
The push to reopen Indian Point is less about energy needs and more about political gamesmanship. Trump’s White House calls nuclear “more American” than renewables. That rhetoric plays well for fossil and nuclear lobbyists but does nothing for families struggling with bills.
Hochul’s office insists “there have been no discussions” about reopening Indian Point. Yet her administration is funding studies of advanced reactors and directing the New York Power Authority to explore at least one gigawatt of new nuclear upstate. Cuomo, now running for New York City mayor, may also revive nuclear nostalgia as part of his campaign.
Meanwhile, state Republicans continue to propose commissions to study reopening Indian Point. Their talking points emphasize emissions reductions and grid reliability but ignore cost, risk, and waste.
The idea that New York lacks alternatives is false. A 1,250 megawatt transmission line from Quebec hydropower is set to deliver clean electricity to New York City starting next year Hydro-Québec. Offshore wind projects, though stalled at the federal level, are still advancing under state contracts. Solar capacity in New York more than doubled in the last five years NYSERDA. Energy efficiency upgrades and battery storage projects are scaling rapidly.
Each of these solutions is faster to deploy, cheaper, and safer than reviving Indian Point. They also avoid the catastrophic risks of nuclear meltdown or terrorism.
Holtec does not say this out loud, but the company’s entire business model relies on taxpayer subsidies. In Michigan, the Palisades restart would not happen without a massive federal loan. In New York, Holtec would demand similar state guarantees. That means New Yorkers would foot the bill for decades through higher rates and taxes.
Subsidies already distort the market. Nuclear enjoys federal production credits, liability caps under the Price-Anderson Act, and billions in decommissioning funds. Add in new loans and bailouts, and the picture becomes clear: nuclear survives not because it is efficient, but because it is politically protected.
Every dollar spent on reviving Indian Point is a dollar not spent on real climate solutions. Nuclear projects take years or decades to complete. The climate crisis demands action now. Solar, wind, batteries, and efficiency deliver immediate emissions cuts and can be built in months, not decades.
Even Holtec admits a restart would take at least four years. By then, New York could have added thousands of megawatts of renewables and storage for less money and without adding new nuclear waste to a community already burdened.
Opposition to Indian Point was not abstract. For years, residents, environmental groups, and scientists fought tirelessly to close the plant. Groups like Riverkeeper, Scenic Hudson, and Clearwater organized public meetings, lawsuits, and grassroots campaigns. They won. That victory must not be erased.
Today, those same voices are rising again. Sen. Liz Krueger has said reopening Indian Point is reckless given the fault line risk. Sen. Pete Harckham of Westchester warned that subsidies would come straight from ratepayers and that “it makes more sense to support renewables.”
Communities have already carried the costs of Indian Point once. Asking them to do it again would be an insult.
The debate over Indian Point is a test of political will. Will New York fall for the false promise of a nuclear revival, or will it invest in real solutions that cut pollution, create jobs, and lower bills?
Holtec and its allies want to reanimate a dead reactor for profit. They will spin it as patriotic, inevitable, even green. But the facts are clear. Nuclear is too slow, too risky, too expensive, and too unjust.
New York has better choices. The fight to close Indian Point was long and hard won. Reviving it would be a step backward at a time when the state — and the planet — cannot afford to stumble.