CCS to Release Results of North Country and CNY Survey Regarding Advanced Nuclear Energy Generation

Purpose and Background for this Study:

The Center for Community Studies at Jefferson Community College completed its 26th Annual North Country Survey of the Community in October. This study is a longitudinal study of quality-of-life in the region measuring attitudes and behaviors among residents and has been completed locally since April 2000. This annual study also involves an omnibus survey component, in that the Center offers the opportunity to local individuals and organizations to suggest survey topics and questions that could be included in the study each year. These additional omnibuses, or add-on, survey items are a free service that the Center provides to local communities and groups. In October 2025, the additional survey topic that has been studied involves new advanced nuclear energy technology with investigation of residents’ familiarity, concerns, perceived importance of attributes, levels of support versus opposition of nuclear development, and level of interest in being further educated regarding the new technology.

In addition to its public opinion survey research activities, the Center has a mission of providing forums for education and discussion of emerging important topics or issues for North Country residents. In partnership with 116th Assemblymember Scott Gray, the Center for Community Studies will be hosting a public forum regarding Nuclear Energy on campus on Wednesday evening November 12th, from 6:00-8:00 pm in the Sturtz Theater. This forum will address newly developed Advanced Nuclear Energy technologies that could impact or shape the state and local municipalities’ electric energy policies and economic development in the years ahead. Specifically, a panel of nuclear energy experts at the forum will explain new technologies, and address safety, waste disposal, economic impact, jobs, the environment, and future electricity prices.

Highlighted Findings from this Study:

To support the upcoming nuclear energy public forum at JCC by providing current local public opinion data, the Center included the following four survey questions regarding nuclear energy in its recent omnibus survey.

1. Have you heard anything at all about Advanced Nuclear Energy generation power plants?
Adult residents in the four-county region are slightly more likely to have heard of Advanced Nuclear Energy power generation plants as they are to have not heard (49% versus 42%, respectively) with the largest familiarity with this form of energy generation reported in Oswego and St. Lawrence Counties.

2. Please indicate whether you have concerns with each of the following aspects of an Advanced Nuclear Energy plant if it were to be constructed in the North Country (or, "Oswego County"). How concerned would you be with:
a. Safety for local residents?
b. The handling of spent fuel?
c. The dependability of the power supply?
d. The impact on long-term electricity rates?

Among four potential concerns that were studied, clearly the aspect of an Advanced Nuclear Energy power plant that is of most concern to residents is a pocketbook issue – concern with the impact on long-term electricity rates, with 61% of participants expressing that they are very or somewhat concerned with future rates. Among the four studied counties, Lewis County residents consistently tend to express the most concerns while Oswego County residents express the least concerns.

3. How important to you are the following considerations with how electricity is produced in the future?
a. Creating local jobs.
b. Strengthening the local economic development.
c. Reducing emissions.
d. Affordability of electricity.
e. Preservation of open agricultural land.
Among five studied considerations, or potential positive impacts of Advanced Nuclear Energy generation, clearly the aspect of an Advanced Nuclear Energy power plant that is of most importance to residents again is a pocketbook issue – importance of the future affordability of electricity. With 91% of participants expressing that this consideration is “extremely or very” important to them (60% responded “extremely”, 31% responded “very”, while 0% responded either “not too” or “not at all” important). Attitudes regarding cost of electricity are tremendously consistent throughout the study region, with all four counties of study reporting an “extremely or very” important rate between 90% and 92%. Among the five studied considerations, reducing emissions is of least importance to residents with only 57% responding “extremely or very” important (particularly lower in Lewis County where only 44% responded this high level of perceived importance).

4. Are you familiar enough with Advanced Nuclear Energy technology to confidently know whether you support or oppose the potential future development of these power plants in the North Country (or, Oswego County), or do you feel that you need to learn more about the technology and its impacts before you could decide whether you support or oppose?
The final survey question was designed with two goals: (1) identification of the level of desire to learn more about nuclear energy technology, and (2) among those residents who do feel that they know enough about the technology to confidently decide – do you support or oppose potential future development of these power plants in the North Country (or, Oswego County)?

The two key findings that emerge from the data are: (1) a majority of residents, more than three-in-five (61%), feel that they need to learn more before they could confidently decide whether they support or oppose the future development, and (2) among those who feel that they are well enough informed to confidently decide, by a wide 4:1 ratio, residents are more in support than in opposition to the development of nuclear power generation plants in the future (32% to 8%, respectively).

Notably, the greatest level of support is found in Oswego County, with 37% supporting and only 6% opposing, however, there is much greater support than opposition found in each of the other three studied North Country counties, as well. Finally, as illustrated in the graph to the right, it is clear that a majority of residents wish to learn more about Advanced Nuclear Energy before confidently making a personal decision about support versus opposition, and a large majority support for development among those who are already well-informed, are consistent findings, quite independent of other socio-demographic factors. In other words, often-times in our current society, attitudes and behaviors are very polarized among societal subgroups. In particular, polarization due to political ideology and/or political party is now often-times the rule, rather than the exception when researching public opinion. However, this survey item that investigates familiarity and support for Advanced Nuclear Energy shows very similar findings among all studied subgroups, even among the subgroups of political ideology and political party affiliation that commonly have great divides. As an example, among registered Republicans the majority (52%) indicate that they wish to learn more about Advanced Nuclear Energy before deciding whether or not they are in support of future development, while among those Republicans who feel confident in their current understanding they are approximately four times more likely to support rather than oppose (39% versus 9%, respectively). Similarly, among registered Democrats the majority (63%) indicate that they wish to learn more about Advanced Nuclear Energy before deciding whether or not they are in support of future development, while among those Democrats who feel confident in their current understanding they are also almost approximately four times more likely to support rather than oppose (29% versus 8%, respectively). The current study data strongly suggests that Alternative Nuclear Energy opinion among Northern and Central New York is one of the rare bipartisan agreement topics in our society in 2025.

Methodology Employed for this Study:

Between October 21-25, 2025, a mixed-mode sampling method of contact was employed in this study to complete a total of 2,109 interviews of adult residents of a four-county region in Northern and Central New York. Surveys were completed by 593 Jefferson County residents, 515 Lewis County residents, 472 Oswego County residents, and 529 St. Lawrence County residents. Working under the supervision of the Center for Community Studies research staff in both a physical call center in Watertown and a virtual remote call center, statistics students enrolled at the College and trained in interview techniques completed 505 live interviews via telephone on both the landline and cellular phones of adult residents. An additional 1,511 surveys were completed online, with 629 via random email invitation and 882 via random MMS text message push-to-web invitations to cellular phones. Finally, 93 intercept surveys were completed at Fort Drum to assist in attaining accurate representation of the military-affiliated subpopulation in the sample collected in this study. After sampling, all data were weighted within-county for gender, age, education, military affiliation, and racial background to ensure representativeness of samples within each county, and when generating aggregate region-wide estimates a further weight for county population sizes was applied. The result of this sampling of 2,109 Northern and Central New York residents is an approximate margin of error of ±2.4% after this weighting sample survey results toward Northern and Central New York population characteristics. County-specific margins of error are approximately ±5% due to smaller within-county sample sizes. The full report of socio-demographic analyses for each of the Advanced Nuclear Energy survey questions in this study is included here as a separate file.

Final Comments and Acknowledgements:

This Advanced Nuclear Energy survey has been completed as a subset of the annual omnibus annual survey of the attitudes and opinions of a representative sample of adult residents of the region. This annual survey by the Center for Community Studies has been completed each year in Jefferson County since 2000. The survey expanded to include Lewis County annually in 2007, and further expanded to include St. Lawrence County in 2015. This is the first year of including Oswego County in the regional surveying. The primary goal of the annual survey is to collect data regarding quality-of-life issues of importance to local citizens, and as a result this study provides an annual “snapshot” of life in the region. Additionally, analysis of the 26th Annual Survey data provides an information-rich “motion-picture” of changes in the lives of residents over the past two and a half decades when trends are investigated via comparing with earlier-year results. The longitudinal trended data included in this study summarizes results of over 25,000 interviews that have been completed in a total of 57 county-specific surveys of the community in the four counties since 2000. Typically, the results of this large survey study are released in December, after sampling is completed in October. This year an unprecedented early release of the Advanced Nuclear Energy survey results is being employed to facilitate their use in the aforementioned public forum to be held at the College on November 12th. The remainder of the longitudinal survey results that have been collected in this omnibus study and an associated full longitudinal report of findings will be released to the public in December 2025, following the normal schedule.

The sponsors of these annual surveys of the Northern and Central New York communities are Jefferson Community College, CarFreshner Inc., the Northern New York Community Foundation, the Development Authority of the North Country, and the Lewis County Board of Legislature, who all provide financial support to assist in the funding of these projects.