Inside Shoreham: The $6B Nuclear Plant That Ran for a Day and Died

The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant on Long Island’s north shore is a time capsule of 1970s engineering. Its GE Mark II Boiling Water Reactor took twelve years to build, from 1973 to 1985, but only ever reached 5% capacity under a testing license. Mounting public opposition — fueled by the Three Mile Island meltdown and Chernobyl — led state and county officials to reject the plant’s emergency evacuation plan, blocking it from ever obtaining a full operating license.

The economics were brutal: the $6 billion facility was sold to New York State for $1 in 1992, with the real cost passed to Long Island ratepayers as a 3% electric surcharge. Its 1994 decommissioning was the first dismantling of a licensed commercial reactor in US history, requiring removal of five million pounds of radioactive waste and 560 fuel rod assemblies. A location scout’s tour reveals the plant frozen in place — a control room walled with analog switches, gauges and ‘SCRAM’ emergency-shutdown buttons, a desk calendar last flipped to November 8, 1994, seven-foot reinforced containment walls, and the claustrophobic airlock tube leading to the reactor core.

Beyond the industrial-archaeology appeal, Shoreham is a case study in how public sentiment and regulatory process can override sunk cost entirely. The site now serves mainly as a filming location — its control room and turbine hall appeared in the missile-launch scene of ‘The Dictator’ — while one unsold turbine reportedly remains available to any buyer willing to overlook that it probably doesn’t work.