On January 12, 2022, the New York Power Authority posted a poll on its Twitter feed. It asked people to vote for the clean energy technology they would like more of in 2022. The poll listed electric vehicles, green hydrogen, solar and geothermal.
Within a couple of hours, more than sixty users had responded to @NYPAenergy with a write-in candidate – nuclear energy. More than 98% of the tweet responses suggested nuclear as the technology they would like to see more of in 2022 – outside of the people who chose one of the four choices offered.
The reaction was impressive. It was apparently overwhelming to the NYPA – the settings were changed to prevent any more responses from people that the NYPA did not follow or respond to. It’s possible that they did not want the write-in candidate to win.
Dr. Chris Keefer, the host of the Decouple Podcast, produced a recording of the way the tweet feed grew and then shared that recording.
Who knows if spontaneous actions from a disparate group of advocates will have any impact on energy policies? It is, however, one more data point indicating that the public conversation about nuclear energy is changing.