The media can’t seem to explain the collapse in China’s domestic solar installations.

 June 14, 2026

 

CORTLANDT — A massive nuclear power plant sitting idle on the eastern bank of the Hudson River could be repowered, helping alleviate New York’s high energy costs and air pollution levels, both worsened by surging fossil fuel use. 

 

But the stigma of reopening a controversial power source that environmentalists and other advocacy organizations fought for years to shut down has left the plant out of the ongoing discussions about reducing New York’s carbon emissions.

 

Gov. Kathy Hochul does not support reviving the plant, which closed four months before she ascended to the governor’s office, although she has said it was shuttered “without having a plan B in place.” Instead, the governor wants to build new reactors in the far reaches of upstate New York, far from New York City, where the power is needed most.

 

The two reactors at Indian Point are surrounded by more than four feet of reinforced concrete.

Indian Point provided New York City with roughly 25% of its power needs.

This room housed the electrical components that would send energy to the grid. 

 

 

. 

One of the control rooms at Indian Point.

 

The Indian Point plant in upper Westchester County closed in April 2021 after years of fierce efforts from state leaders critical of its safety, including former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, and celebrity environmentalists such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who now runs the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

 

The energy gap created by the shuttering of Indian Point has so far been filled with some of the state’s dirtiest and oldest fossil fuel power plants, subjecting residents in those areas to more pollution and higher energy bills. The ongoing use of those antiquated plants has further imperiled New York’s ambitions to dramatically reduce emissions that impact public health, pollute the environment and leave residents exposed to volatile fuel prices. 

 

Gigawatt-hours of power production by source

2022 was the first full year without Indian Point

Renewable power

Nuclear power

Fossil fuel power

 

^{The debate over the plant’s closure has been reignited as Holtec, the company charged with dismantling the facility over the next two decades, has said it can bring it back online.} 

 

Advocates of Indian Point’s continued closure say the facility comes with unprecedented risks, especially given the context of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in Manhattan, which occurred less than 30 miles away, and the generator’s proximity to more than 20 million people.

 

“New Yorkers deserve zero-carbon electricity without sacrificing their safety,” said Kit Kennedy, managing director for power, climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Nuclear has a role in the clean energy future — Indian Point does not.”

 

But the shutdown squandered a major source of carbon-free power and deepened New York’s reliance on fossil fuels at the very moment the state was trying to move away from them. 

 

“If you care about climate, then you’ve got to be appalled, and that’s putting it mildly, at what we did to ourselves,” Charles Komanoff, an economist and longtime environmental advocate in New York City, said of the plant’s closing.

 

Roughly 92% of the clean nuclear energy lost with Indian Point has been replaced with fossil fuels, according to an analysis of grid operator data by the Times Union. 

 

Bowline, a polluting natural gas plant near Indian Point, produced seven times more electricity in 2025 than in 2019, when the nuclear generator was still online.

 

Bowline, a natural gas plant in Rockland County has ran more often since Indian Point closed.

 

Hell Gate, a natural gas plant in the South Bronx, created more emissions in 2022 — the first year after Indian Point’s closure — than any year since 2008, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data.

 

Air pollution exposure heightens the risk of “asthma-related emergency department visits, which are already quite high in the neighborhood,”

said Markus Hilpert, an associate professor at Columbia University. Hell Gate and other so-called “peaker” facilities — designed to run only when the electricity grid is under pressure — also have shorter smokestacks, which increases their public health effects in the areas around them, Hilpert added. 

New York’s dependency on natural gas is also raising energy prices.

 

Over the last decade, U.S. companies have sent record amounts of natural gas overseas as shipping technology improves, giving producers access to buyers willing to pay higher prices abroad, which in turn can increase domestic prices.

 

In addition, New York’s pipeline system is especially stressed in the winter when it needs to transport fuel to both heat residents' homes and supply power plants. Many states face the same predicament, but New York has less pipeline capacity to absorb those spikes. 
 
For much of last year, when demand was low, gas prices in the Capital Region and northern Pennsylvania were roughly the same. But during the brutal cold stretch in late 2025, gas was pricier across New York than in Pennsylvania.

 

Kennedy, the managing director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, noted that hydropower from Canada that was recently connected to New York City’s grid under the $6 billion Champlain Hudson Power Express project has offset some of the gains in fossil fuel use. Several offshore wind farms are also set to come online in the next few years, which will provide more clean power.

 

As for Indian Point, it would cost about $10 billion and take at least five years to restart the plant, said Patrick O’Brien, a Holtec spokesman.

That’s less than half of the time of what state officials anticipate it will take to build a new nuclear facility. 

 

The company isn’t actively pursuing a restart, but had provided an estimate at the request of President Donald J. Trump’s administration, which has pushed for the facility to be restarted as part of a broader policy to expand U.S. nuclear energy supply. Holtec’s figure isn’t a detailed projection; it’s a “rough estimate” based on the company’s work restarting a nuclear power generator in Michigan, O’Brien said.

 

U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican who represents part of Westchester County, said closing Indian Point was “one of the dumbest decisions that New York has made.”

 

He’s joined Trump administration officials in advocating for its reopening. 

 

‘We do not want it’

Hochul, who’s made expanding nuclear power a top priority, has said she’s not interested in Holtec’s services. She also wants nuclear plants built in communities where the public is considered more supportive of the jobs they would bring, which hasn’t been the case in Westchester County. 

 

“We do not need it — and we do not want it,” Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins said in his recent State of the County address.

 

But the plant’s closure has also left nearby communities in the county grappling with fiscal calamity. 

 

Local governments have “been decimated from the loss in revenue,” said Richard H. Becker, supervisor of the town of Cortlandt, where the plant is located. He said he learned about a 2017 agreement between the state and Entergy, the plant’s owner at the time, to close the facility when a story was published in the New York Times.

 

“This was a decision that came on down,” Becker said. “There was no discussion as to the risk, benefits, and alternatives to closing Indian Point.”

 

Brian Vangor was part of a team that successfully operated one of Indian Point's reactor without issue for more than 700 consecutive days leading up to its closure in 2021.

 

Top right: Power from Indian Point has so far been replaced with polluting natural gas plants. Bottom right: Sections of the plant are taped off as workers disassemble the facility.

 

Payments from the facility made up roughly 30% of the nearby Hendrick Hudson Central School District’s budget. A state fund for communities near closed power plants is available to mend some of that gap, but less is provided each year, and it’s set to expire by 2028 for the district, if an extension isn’t passed by the state Legislature.

 

Residents of Cortlandt are facing property tax hikes of more than 6% this year to support the school district. 

 

“Programs that we hold dear may be in jeopardy,” if the district doesn’t receive more support in the coming years, Hendrick Hudson Superintendent Michael Tromblee said. 

 

Entergy also consistently paid for small improvements like building a multimedia lab and paying for talent shows, which Holtec has not provided the same support for, despite Tromblee’s requests. Holtec is making payments to local governments but they aren’t nearly as much as when the plant was operating. “There is no revenue stream, unlike during operational times, to allow for additional community support,” said O’Brien, the company spokesman. 

 

Even with potential financial benefits to nearby governments, the majority of Cortlandt residents are likely against reopening Indian Point, Becker said. Opting for a “less contentious” use of the site, like wind or solar projects, would provide benefits to the grid and municipal budgets, Becker suggested. [Wind and solar owners do everything they can to avoid paying local taxes, Mr Becker, and the State has been on their side in their tax avoidance.]   

 

It will take more than 20 years for Holtec employees to disassemble the plant.

 

Holtec is decades away from clearing the land entirely, making it challenging to build anything else there in the short term. Also, the 240-acre parcel is big enough to house meaningful renewable energy production — but nothing close to the output of a nuclear facility. [Try erecting dozens of 600 ft plus wind turbines in the town on the Hudson River. See how far you get.]

 

The company is also still determining how to dispose of the slightly radioactive water that sits in storage containers at various spots around the property. Normally, tiny resin particles would filter contaminants from the water before it was discharged into the Hudson River. That process exposed the public to some radiation, but officials estimated the dose at less than 1/600th of the radiation that an average person receives in a year. 

 

Holtec has stopped releasing the water after receiving strong pushback from residents who worry about the presence of tritium, a radioactive byproduct of nuclear reactors, which cannot be fully filtered out.

 

The town of Cortlandt is against the “release of the radioactive water into the Hudson because it’s not just tritium … it contains strontium, cobalt and other toxic chemicals,” Becker said.

At Indian Point there are two worlds. Inside contaminated areas where radiation has to be strictly monitored. Other parts of the plant are more akin to a standard office building.

 

Radioactive components are usually kept underwater to shield workers.

 

Barrels of radioactive material sit at various places around the facility.

 

When leaving a radioactive area at Indian Point employees like Brent Magurno must check their hands and feet for contamination.

 

Utilizing water from the Hudson River is integral to the operation of Indian Point, as it cools the plant’s reactors. 

 

O’Brien, the Holtec spokesman, said the company could install less water-intensive technology for roughly $100 million to $200 million if the plant were to be restarted. When Entergy owned the plant, they estimated it would cost over $1 billion — and be technically challenging — to improve the cooling system to comply with state water-quality requirements.

 

‘Hit by a meteor’

As conversations stir about potentially reopening the facility, debates about its closure amid New York’s projected future energy shortfalls are being revived.

 

The 9/11 attacks became the opening salvo in the push to close the plant. Kennedy, an environmental attorney who was on the trial teams in toxic water pollution cases brought against corporate titans Monsanto and DuPont, raised concerns about the vulnerability of the nuclear reactor to a terrorist attack.

 

If the planes had hit the plant, “we would have a much more dire situation than we’re facing now,” Kennedy said in November 2001. He was also an attorney for Riverkeeper, a Hudson Valley environmental group that fought for the closure of Indian Point. It was later revealed in the 2004 9/11 Commission Report that al-Qaida hijackers considered targeting a nuclear facility “near New York.”

 

“It just seemed like, this is not a good plant to have in this part of the world anymore, given the new threats of terrorism,” said Alex Matthiessen, who ran Riverkeeper from 2000 to 2010. 

 

Kennedy was Cuomo’s brother-in-law at the time, a close relationship that helped get Riverkeeper an audience with the former governor. But Cuomo “didn’t need much convincing … that this was not the right place for a nuclear power plant” Matthiessen said.

 

Cuomo launched his campaign to close the facility in 2007 when, as New York’s attorney general at the time, he formally opposed Indian Point getting a new license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Part of Cuomo’s strategy was to convince the public the plant was dangerous after 9/11, but it also included bogging the company down in regulatory red tape until they agreed to close. 

 

Entergy was hesitant to make upgrades to the plant as its long-term future remained under threat. In addition, the company’s financial troubles in the mid-2010s made billions in new investment challenging. During Cuomo’s tenure as governor, New York’s three other nuclear plants began receiving ratepayer-funded subsidies to stay afloat, but Indian Point was excluded. Entergy also was paying $20 million a year in litigation costs in its battles with the state.

 

“Even if they were willing to make those kinds of investments, there were still safety concerns that the administration had,” said Zackary D. Knaub, an attorney in Cuomo’s administration who worked on closing Indian Point from 2015 to 2019. “We wanted to use the leverage that we had with the state’s regulatory authority, the ongoing disputes between Entergy and the state to try to get to a resolution that would allow Entergy to cease operating that plant.”

 

Over the 20-year fight, more and more charges against the facility would be levied. 

 

Some were legitimate. In 2016, regulators found that 27% of the bolts in one of Indian Point’s reactors were degraded. The following year, about 31% of the bolts in the other reactor at the site were found to be faulty. It was the largest number of problematic bolts the Nuclear Regulatory Commission found in any American nuclear reactor.

 

Other claims were questionable. 

 

The plant’s antiquated cooling system, which could be deadly for fish, presented too great a risk to the local ecosystem, proponents of its closure said. 

But the State Department of Environmental Conservation has not been able to detect a meaningful change in aquatic life in the Hudson River since the plant went offline five years ago, a spokesman said.

 

And after a devastating 2011 earthquake led to a major nuclear incident in Japan, the fault line under Indian Point came under increased scrutiny. But the potential for devastating earthquakes is infinitesimal in Westchester County compared to Fukushima, according to Stephen Holler, a physics professor at Fordham University. 

 

“People can say we can’t do this because there might be an earthquake, by the same token, we might get hit by a meteor,” Holler said. 

 

 

Four smokestacks protrude up from a gas plant in Queens just off the East River. Right: The yellow smokestacks are part of the Harlem River Yard gas plant which sits next to an rail line and Fedex shipping center just on the other side of Randalls Island.

 

The yellow smokestacks are part of the Harlem River Yard gas plant which sits next to a rail line and Fedex shipping center just on the other side of Randalls Island.

 

And the safety of nuclear power needs to be viewed in the context of other energy sources, Holler added. For instance, air pollution causes about 200,000 premature deaths annually, according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

 

Nuclear power production has been increasingly safe over the last few decades, Holler contends. Indian Point did experience unplanned shutdowns — in many years, there were several — but one of the plant’s reactors ran 753 days straight without any issues at the end of its life. 

 

“Once something gets into the cultural mindset, I think it’s hard to change their opinion of it, but frankly, we need nuclear to transition an oil and gas economy to a renewable economy,” Holler said. [Nuclear is the endpoint of the “transition.”]

Ezra Bitterman

Investigative Reporter

Ezra Bitterman is a Joseph T. Lyons Investigative Fellow for the Times Union. He is from Los Angeles and studied Journalism at the University of Missouri. Ezra previously reported for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Columbia Missourian and Euractiv. He's reachable at Ezra.Bitterman@TimesUnion.com.

 

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