Powering Upstate Renewal: Nuclear Energy and the Politics of Abundance

By Eric Anders

In the early 1980s, I lived in the village of Cazenovia, New York, while my father commuted to nearby Utica, serving as an executive at a local GE manufacturing plant. GE’s robust presence symbolized the broader economic optimism of Upstate communities—towns defined by stable employment, thriving local businesses, and belief in long-term growth.

In the decades since, that optimism faded as factories closed, jobs disappeared, and formerly prosperous towns struggled to preserve their identities. Today, Governor Kathy Hochul’s ambitious plan to revive Upstate through industrial renewal resonates deeply. My firsthand experience of witnessing both the peak and decline of regional industry underscores the urgency of rebuilding economic vitality and restoring the community resilience that once defined this part of New York State.

Governor Hochul is pursuing something few Democratic leaders have dared in decades. She is reviving the spirit of the New Deal—this time directed at the defining challenge of our era: climate change. By embracing nuclear energy as the keystone of the state’s future, she signals a return to the ambitious, public industrial policy that built modern America.

For too long, the Democratic Party has avoided big dreams and bold infrastructure projects. Starting in the 1970s, liberals increasingly embraced an environmental orthodoxy suspicious of industrial growth—often anti-corporate and thus inadvertently anti-worker and anti-union. While workers’ rights and higher wages remained in party platforms, the self-described “party of the people” gradually drifted into elitist detachment from the working-class voters it once proudly championed. Hochul’s embrace of industry—what Derek Thompson calls “the abundance agenda”—necessarily involves a turn toward the only clean energy capable of powering large-scale industrial revival: nuclear power. Hochul’s nuclear-powered vision of abundance could be the turning point in Upstate politics, restoring the Democratic Party’s lost connection with working-class voters by revitalizing regional economies and rebuilding the coalition itself.

As climate change became a defining political issue, Democrats doubled down on their missteps, funneling subsidies toward affluent climate solutions—pouring incentives into Musk-made luxury electric vehicles and rooftop solar panels for high-priced single-family homes—while treating labor as little more than a rhetorical afterthought. This strategy proved to be a strategic and moral failure, alienating the working-class voters Democrats claimed to represent.

Governor Hochul is charting a different course—one not merely about cutting emissions, but about reclaiming Upstate New York through nuclear-powered abundance. Her goal isn’t just to decarbonize the grid; it’s to spark an industrial revival in a region that has been left behind for decades. Upstate’s manufacturing base collapsed in the late 20th century, when titans like GE, IBM, and Kodak moved out. In the aftermath, too many towns were abandoned to decline, and Democratic leaders offered little beyond promises and piecemeal aid. Hochul understands what too many in her party still refuse to say aloud: such a revival is impossible without nuclear power.

Nuclear energy is not the destination—it is the enabling condition. It’s the only energy source capable of delivering the vast quantities of reliable, affordable, zero-carbon electricity required to power a new generation of factories, assembly lines, and high-tech campuses. It’s the kind of energy needed to sustain major strategic investments, such as Micron’s massive semiconductor facility planned near Syracuse, which embodies Hochul’s vision of industrial revival. 

Unlike wind turbines and solar panels, nuclear plants run continuously, providing reliable power around the clock, in every season and every type of weather. We’ve long had access to a proven clean-energy source capable of delivering precisely the kind of industrial abundance Hochul envisions: nuclear power. Progressive governments in France recognized this decades ago and invested decisively in nuclear, rapidly decarbonizing its economy while achieving abundant energy without fossil fuels. Today, nuclear power provides roughly 70 percent of France’s electricity, and the country maintains an impeccable record for safety and waste management.

Without nuclear—or massive batteries that themselves come with severe environmental drawbacks—reliance on intermittent renewables inevitably leads back to fossil fuels, usually natural gas. This approach locks us into unstable grids, higher emissions, and the same destructive, “dirty abundance” we've experienced over the last 80 years. If Democrats are serious about reviving Upstate sustainably and reconnecting with working-class voters, nuclear energy must be central. Without it, their vision of sustainable industrial renewal simply won’t materialize.

That is the political insight driving Hochul’s strategy. She isn’t proposing another token climate gesture or boutique pilot program. She’s laying the groundwork for a serious industrial transformation – one that can bring real jobs and real pride back to towns Democrats have lost. This isn’t about consumer rebates for Tesla drivers in Brooklyn. It’s about welders in Buffalo, machinists in Binghamton, and electricians in Schroon Lake. And it starts with nuclear power.

By placing the new reactor build-out under the New York Power Authority (NYPA)—the public utility created by Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1931—Hochul is reviving the Rooseveltian tradition of public-led infrastructure, union labor, and broadly shared prosperity. The new nuclear reactors aren't an end in themselves; they're essential for powering strategic industrial investments like Micron's massive semiconductor facility planned near Syracuse. Micron’s chip plant represents exactly the kind of high-tech manufacturing project capable of reshaping the regional economy, creating thousands of skilled jobs, and revitalizing communities that have struggled for decades.

Constructing nuclear infrastructure requires steel, concrete, and precision manufacturing, generating immediate economic benefits. But even more important is the sustained industrial resurgence nuclear power makes possible—supplying reliable, affordable, clean energy to facilities like Micron’s. Such projects don’t create gig jobs or short-term “climate corps” fellowships; they offer stable, long-term careers capable of sustaining working-class families and communities. New York’s labor unions enthusiastically endorse Hochul’s vision precisely because it promises real industry, powered by clean energy, to strengthen the state’s economy.

This is how Democrats can reconnect with Upstate: not through austerity or wishful thinking, but through purposeful investments and genuine abundance. The road to industrial renewal runs through projects like Micron’s chip plant, reliably energized by nuclear power. The road to political renewal runs through the prosperity these projects deliver. Hochul sees the connection clearly. It’s time her party did too.

A Real Industrial Policy

In announcing her plan, Hochul did something most liberals have long avoided: she rejected the fantasy of a 100% renewables-powered economy. That vision may have satisfied the cultural sensibilities of affluent urban environmentalists, but in practice it delivered only fragility, higher costs, and a deeper dependence on fossil fuels. Wind turbines and solar panels are variable by nature – their output fluctuates with the weather, seasons, and time of day – and they always require backup. More often than not, that backup has come from natural gas plants, eroding many of the environmental benefits that wind and solar are supposed to deliver. The physics are not complicated: only by building firm, dispatchable sources like nuclear can we phase out fossil fuels without undermining the stability of the grid.

In northern climates such as Upstate New York, the practical limits of renewable energy become even clearer. Solar panels produce significantly less power during long winter months, precisely when energy demand is highest. Without strong and consistent wind—something inland regions like Upstate often lack—wind turbines operate at a fraction of their advertised capacity. By contrast, nuclear power reliably generates large-scale electricity day and night, year-round, regardless of location or weather. 

A single typical nuclear reactor like the one Hochul proposes can produce as much electricity as roughly 800 wind turbines, which would cover over 250 square miles, or a solar installation spanning approximately 50 square miles. To put that in perspective, 50 square miles of solar panels would cover an area larger than the entire city of Syracuse itself, creating a sprawling corridor of panels stretching along I-81 and I-90, visible from Utica to Syracuse and halfway down to Binghamton. Nuclear power achieves the same power generation while occupying only about one square mile, offering consistent, scalable, and clean energy without requiring massive land use. For industrially ambitious regions like Upstate, nuclear power isn’t just more reliable—it's the only practical path toward a climate-friendly abundance agenda.

Yet for decades, the dominant wing of the Democratic Party insisted that an energy future built exclusively on renewables was not only possible but preferable—and that nuclear power was unnecessary or even dangerous. None of it was true. The promised horrors of nuclear never materialized: nuclear energy maintained a remarkable safety record worldwide, while fossil fuels quietly killed millions through pollution-related illnesses and environmental damage. A widely cited study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology estimates that nuclear power prevented approximately 1.8 million deaths between 1971 and 2009—lives that otherwise would have been lost to fossil-fuel emissions. 

Yet legacy environmental groups, whose ideology has long dominated Democratic policy, continued pushing myths about nuclear dangers, overstating the viability of renewables alone, and misleading the public. Their misinformation not only hindered genuine climate progress but actively harmed the environment and public health, all while radically enriching fossil-fuel interests. Working-class voters didn't necessarily see through the deception, but they saw clearly enough that their communities were declining even as political elites engaged in performative virtue signaling. They watched towns lose jobs, factories close down, and their futures become increasingly uncertain—all while a party that claimed to represent them remained more committed to ideological purity and affluent environmentalist donors than to practical industrial renewal. Is it any wonder they stopped listening?

If Democrats want to win back Upstate – and the industrial heartland more broadly – they need to start where Hochul has: with nuclear power. Not as a token talking point, but as the core of an abundance agenda that rebuilds America, with energy and labor at its foundation. The era of boutique nonprofits and performative green policies must end. It’s time to build for real. As union leaders have made clear, a serious climate strategy can and must create middle-class careers even as it cuts carbon. “New York’s clean energy future depends on reviving and expanding nuclear power…while creating good-paying, family-sustaining, union careers,” the state’s AFL-CIO affirmed. In short, climate action and industrial revival are not opposing goals – they are inseparable.

A Politics of Abundance

For decades, Democratic energy policy has been dominated by an elite aesthetic of austerity—an upper-class preference for scarcity and sacrifice that frames personal virtue and symbolic gestures as solutions to structural problems. This elite outlook remains unconscious of its central irony: those who live comfortably with abundance seek to impose their aesthetic of austerity and scarcity onto working-class communities. 

This hypocritical and ultimately entitled mindset has viewed limits not merely as temporary necessities but as inherent virtues, leading directly to constrained ambition, inadequate infrastructure, and insufficient energy to sustain genuine industrial revival. But the politics of austerity hasn't delivered on environmental promises; instead, it has enriched fossil-fuel interests, eroded Democratic credibility, and alienated working-class voters.

Increasingly, progressive voices are rejecting the hypocrisy of austerity disguised as climate policy, calling instead for a positive, expansive vision of prosperity and growth—a vision already realized in France through decisive investment in nuclear power. 

Hochul aligns herself with this shift, explicitly declaring, “We believe in the philosophy of abundance.” Those six words could prove historic. They represent a decisive break from decades of anti-industrial environmentalism, signaling a return to Rooseveltian principles: large-scale public works, strong unions, and an economy designed explicitly to serve the many rather than elite sensibilities or donor-class priorities—powered by nuclear energy, which achieves these goals while safeguarding both climate stability and public health.

If Democrats truly want progress on climate change, restoration of labor power, and renewed trust from working-class voters, they must embrace explicitly what Hochul has already strongly implied: climate-friendly abundance requires nuclear power. There can be no effective and clean industrial policy without a corresponding robust clean energy policy, and no viable clean energy policy excludes nuclear at its core. This truth may discomfort ideological purists, but it's a truth increasingly embraced by an emerging coalition of labor leaders, pragmatic progressives, and climate realists. (See MIT Energy Initiative's 2018 report, The Future of Nuclear Energy in a Carbon-Constrained World.)

This is the future the Democratic Party must claim: a future of prosperity, dignity, and industrial pride. It’s a future driven not by slogans or symbolic gestures, but by reliable nuclear power and sustained industrial growth. It's built not by consultants or NGOs, but by workers and communities. Hochul's vision demonstrates clearly that such a future isn’t just necessary—it's popular, achievable, and already underway.

This is how you win back Upstate: not with elite notions of an austerity aesthetic and virtue signaling, not with anti-science or magical thinking, but with industrial-strength clean energy, unions, and a politics of purpose. The road to industrial renewal runs through nuclear power. The road to political renewal runs through a nuclear-powered abundance agenda. Hochul sees the connections. It’s time her party did too.

Eric Anders is a former Upstate New Yorker (1982 graduate of Cazenovia Central School), the Founder and Executive Director of Earthrise Accord, a nonprofit dedicated to climate justice through nuclear realism, and the publisher of the Earthrise journal.