Hat tip to Frank Maisano of Bracewell (@fvmaisano), whose Monday energy update laid out the Climate Week schedule.

Climate Week NYC has a new center of gravity. This year, a big share of the most talked about events are about nuclear power and the people who build it.

Frank Maisano, the Bracewell energy hand whose weekly update is required reading in Washington, walked through the week in his Monday note. Read his calendar and a theme jumps out. Nuclear is on the program from Tuesday through Thursday, and the conversations are about construction, financing and workforce.

Nuclear on the calendar

  • Atlantic Council Nuclear Energy Policy Summit, Tuesday and Wednesday. On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the summit takes on public and private partnerships to fund new nuclear projects, the states moving first on next generation reactors and the U.S. civil nuclear export program.
  • Bracewell and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, Tuesday. "Powering America's Future: Innovation, Investment and Meeting Rising Energy Demand," with DOE loan official Julie Kozeracki joining the conversation, per Maisano.
  • New York Times Climate Forward, Wednesday. Speakers include Energy Secretary Chris Wright and TerraPower President and CEO Chris Levesque, on who will lead the race to build new energy sources.
  • Nuclear Symposium 2026, Wednesday and Thursday. The main day is at Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island. Maisano lists NYSERDA President Doreen Harris, New York PSC Chair Rory Christian, NYISO CEO Rich Dewey and DOE's Kozeracki among the speakers. Cornell's Atkinson Center co-hosts with Nuclear New York, Generation Atomic and Cornell NiCE.

Cornell alone is leading more than 25 events at Climate Week with more than 30 faculty and staff presenting, according to the Cornell Chronicle.

A worker in a yellow hard hat and plaid shirt on a job site
Photo by Emmanuel Ikwuegbu on Unsplash

What a new reactor looks like on a payroll

Chris Levesque will be on stage Wednesday. His company offers the clearest picture of what new nuclear means for workers.

TerraPower broke ground on its Natrium plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming, in April. The project expects a peak construction workforce of 1,600 workers and 250 permanent jobs once the plant is running, Cowboy State Daily's Kate Meadows reported in May. Kemmerer is planning housing for the construction crews. Mayor Robert Bowen called it "a little city within a city."

The Department of Energy describes the work in layers: hundreds of workers to fabricate complex parts and components, thousands of skilled construction workers to build the plant, and hundreds of operators, maintenance crews and security staff on the job full time.

Those permanent jobs are the long game. A nuclear plant runs for decades, and the people who run it stay in town for decades too.

The national numbers

Nuclear power added 2,300 workers across the country in 2025, a growth rate of 4 percent, according to the Department of Energy's 2026 U.S. Energy and Employment Report, released this month. The median energy sector salary in that report was $63,000. That number translates to 24 percent above the national median.

And the trades pipeline is growing. New registered construction apprentices reached 112,000 in 2025, up 9 percent from 2024, per the same report. Those are the electricians, pipefitters and welders a new generation of reactors will need.

Four large concrete cooling towers under a blue sky
Photo by Lukáš Lehotský on Unsplash

Why New York matters here

Look at the Roosevelt Island speaker list: New York's energy authority, its utility regulator and the operator of its grid, all in one room with a DOE official. That is the group that decides how new generation gets planned, financed and connected in one of the country's biggest power markets.

"Energy infrastructure is not built on spreadsheets, it's built on partnerships," Isiru Seneviratne, co-founder of Nuclear New York, told the Cornell Chronicle ahead of the symposium.

Partnerships lead to projects. Projects lead to crews.

What to listen for

  • Headcounts. How many construction workers at peak, and how many permanent jobs after.
  • Supply chain. Which components get fabricated in American shops, and where.
  • Training. Which unions, community colleges and universities are building the nuclear workforce.

The bottom line

Climate Week draws more than 100,000 people to New York, per the organizer, Climate Group. This year a lot of them are talking about building reactors. One plant in Wyoming alone is planning for 1,600 construction workers and 250 permanent jobs. Multiply that by the projects on this week's agenda and you have a jobs story worth following.

Thanks to Frank Maisano for the road map. If you are not on his list, you should be.

Sources
Frank Maisano, Bracewell Policy Resolution Group, Energy Update (September 21, 2026). Follow @fvmaisano
Cowboy State Daily, Kate Meadows, Kemmerer Plans For Man Camp To House 1,600 TerraPower Nuclear Plant Workers (May 29, 2026)
U.S. Department of Energy, Next Gen Nuclear Plant and Jobs Are Coming to Wyoming
U.S. Department of Energy, 2026 U.S. Energy and Employment Report (September 2026)
Cornell Chronicle, Krisy Gashler, Cornellians to address AI, NY energy future at Climate Week NYC (September 9, 2026)
Nuclear Symposium 2026
Climate Group, Climate Week NYC 2026