The vision of RFK Sr. is bringing it back
Alex Panagiotopoulos, co-founder of New York Energy Alliance
One of the worst flashpoints in American history was the shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear power plant. The controlled demolition of 25% of New York City’s energy was seen as an unavoidable step in a Green New Deal future. Activists promised that stable sources of clean energy could be smoothly replaced by covering rural areas in solar panels, wind turbines and battery plants.
A celebrity studded video celebrating the 2021 closure proclaimed:
“Nobody’s going to notice when it goes off.”
“An increase in renewables and energy efficiency is going to completely offset the closure.”
But the real results were grim: 1,000 union jobs were lost, energy bills skyrocketed, and local tax bases were devastated. Fossil fuel emissions surged, while Hudson River striped bass populations declined to all-time lows – the exact opposite of what environmental NGOs had promised for decades.
Now, as Politico reported this week, Holtec is floating a $10 billion plan to restart Indian Point. After five years of rising bills, peaker plant dependence, and grid instability, New York may spend billions to resurrect the very plant it once buried.
This reversal would not surprise Robert F. Kennedy Senior. In 1967, testifying before Congress about Indian Point and the proposed Storm King pumped hydro project, he dismissed the idea that ecological concerns required shutting projects down:
“I cannot believe that our marine biologists are unable to offer assistance in meeting this problem on the Hudson. I cannot believe that a solution to the problems with the Storm King project and the effects of the Indian Point operation cannot be found.”
His son took the opposite path. RFK Jr. made his name leading the campaign to kill Indian Point, channeling anti-nuclear hysteria into political capital. Instead of his father’s optimism, he embraced paranoia about invisible contaminants and aligned with NGOs that openly campaigned against population growth.
RFK Sr., like his brother President John F. Kennedy, belonged to the American System tradition that built the Erie Canal, the transcontinental railroad and invented nuclear energy in the first place. He sparred with Governor Nelson Rockefeller over whether the New York Power Authority should be allowed to finance nuclear plants. After Kennedy’s death, Rockefeller relented, and public financing helped get multiple nuclear projects over the finish line.
The echoes of this are still felt today: American nuclear power would not be experiencing a rebirth without the backstopping of the federal Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office.
Holtec’s plan, which would require state and federal backing, grants, and long-term contracts, is a modern echo of that same American System. Private capital cannot shoulder the burden of nation-scale projects alone. Only when the state directs credit toward the general welfare can society build at this level.
Indian Point’s possible rebirth means much more than megawatts. It would be the vindication of RFK Sr.’s Promethean vision, delayed for half a century.
