The State of New York has only four remaining nuclear reactors. There are three in Oswego County: Nine Mile 1, Nine Mile Point Unit 2 (expires 2046), and the James A. FitzPatrick plant (expires 2034); and one in Wayne County: R.G. Ginna. These are key anchors in the electric grid, cranking out more than one-fifth of New York’s electricity. The 55-year-old Nine Mile Point Unit 1, outside Oswego, is the oldest operating nuclear reactor in the country. The R.G. Ginna plant is second. Their operating licenses expire in 2029.
These plants provide 1,800 high-paying jobs in needy regions and pay tens of millions of dollars in local property taxes. Furthermore, their presence helped lure Micron Technology executives, who were looking for a site near the Oswego NPPs to build a $100 billion chip fab complex.
If Micron builds all four planned chip fabs in Clay, they will consume 16 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year. Since the equipment is extremely sensitive to fluctuations in voltage, the reliable, around-the-clock output from nuclear plants is indispensable. “You lose up to a week’s worth of output for a millisecond power disruption,” said Scott Gatzemeier, the Micron official in charge of the project.
