Cuomo’s nuclear option

Foes of state subsidies to three upstate nuclear plants are raising a stink: They say New Yorkers, especially downstate, will have to pay billions extra in their electric bills as part of a needless “Cuomo tax” that amounts to little more than corporate welfare. The claim is a pile of radioactive garbage. In fact, the payments are all but necessitated by an environmentalist-approved state energy plan passed into law and going into effect April 1.

It commits to aggressive targets, like getting half of all energy from renewable sources like hydro, solar and wind by 2030 — up from the current 26%. And slashing carbon dioxide emissions, which the world’s scientists know to be contributing to climate change, by 40% from a 1990 benchmark.

Take issue with those targets if you like, but as long as they’re law in progressive New York, the state must make a good-faith effort to reach them.

Which essentially necessitates keeping three upstate nuclear plants — which produce lots of power and zero emissions — afloat.

New York has four nuclear plants. There’s Westchester County’s Indian Point, which Gov. Cuomo wants to shut down because it is too close to millions of people in the city and the reactors are near the end of life. Cuomo says he found clean replacement power from Hydro Quebec.

But at the reactors in three upstate plants — all of which are flagging economically, and all of which are crucial to reaching those big energy and environmental goals — there’s no readily available renewable replacement for the lost megawatts.

Their owner, Exelon, is all set to shut them down; in an era of fracking and rock-bottom energy prices, they’re not making enough money to justify continued operation.

Which means, in order to keep the energy plan alive, the state’s Public Service Commission needs to send subsidies.

How much? Good question. Last spring, the PSC estimated the cost would be $329 million over 12 years, spread out across electric customers statewide. Then, late in the process, the estimate exploded to $2.86 billion over 12 years.

The PSC needs to explain that huge jump — which it will soon do in court, before a judge.

But even $2.86 billion over 12 years adds up to a piddling 1% of the $264 billion New Yorkers are expected to spend on electricity over that stretch.

It works out to 3 cents a day to generate the energy New Yorkers need while cutting back on climate-change-accelerating greenhouse gases.

It’s a cost environmentalists, of all people, should be happy to pay.