House defeats advanced nuclear proposal from Senate

The House of Representatives voted Thursday against a bill that sought to allow utilities to build and own advanced nuclear reactors.

Senate Bill 447 was defeated on the consent calendar by voice vote. From prime sponsor Sen. Kevin Avard, a Nashua Republican, the proposal would have allowed utilities to own “advanced” nuclear reactors up to 300 megawatts in capacity, about one quarter the size of New Hampshire’s only active nuclear reactor in Seabrook.

Cosponsored by three other Senate Republicans and three House Republicans, the bill previously passed the Senate by voice vote. But in the House this month, the Committee on Science, Technology, and Energy voted unanimously against recommending it..

Members of both the House and Senate have in recent years proposed allowing utilities to own advanced nuclear resources, though the technology remains hypothetical and unapproved in the U.S. But they have broken over details, as when similar language to SB 447 was defeated by the House last year. 

The idea of permitting utilities to own electric generation has proven divisive. Critics say the move would help utilities reestablish a vertically integrated monopoly over the power market. The regulated companies have been relegated to power distribution, forbidden from owning generation, since the mid-1990s. Yet recent laws have expanded the ability of utilities to own small renewable generators, like solar arrays less than 5 megawatts in size, and proponents of SB 447 and similar measures frame the bills as a way to expand that allowance beyond renewables.

The Senate bill also contained provisions to benefit energy generators with other sources of fuel — such as an increase to the state’s annual cap on qualifying low-moderate income solar energy projects, and an extension to the ability of utilities to enter into long-term contracts of up to 20 years with newly built generators.