New England states put differences aside to talk nuclear strategy

New Hampshire has sometimes been an outlier among the New England states when it comes to energy policy and goals, but a surge in interest in nuclear power has provided a moment of unusual alignment between the state and its neighbors.

“I’ve watched the regional level for 25 years, and I have never seen the level of collaboration that’s happening, never,” said Kerrick Johnson, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Service, at a nuclear policy summit held at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, on Wednesday. “We have a moment here that we have to grasp.”

Defining that moment is an enthusiasm for new nuclear energy shared by all six New England governors, whose joint call for a regional nuclear roadmap precipitated Wednesday’s conference. In that day’s discussions, it was clear that the motivation behind that enthusiasm is as varied as the personalities of each state. But speakers agreed that collaboration will be required to realize the nuclear buildout they desire.

“No individual state is capable of developing, of attracting … of deploying new nuclear on its own, thanks to our grid, our geography,” said Daniel Phelan, regional policy director at the New Hampshire Department of Energy, during a panel discussion. “So we’re here today to say to developer communities and to stakeholders that New England is a place where we can have these conversations.”

States compare unique positions

New England states have plenty in common, speakers said, including their network of poles and wires. 

The New England states share one unified electric grid, operated by the not-for-profit ISO-NE (Independent System Operator-New England). Thus, regional trends influence electricity markets in all states on the grid. One of these trends is the shift toward electricity over other fuel sources, in spheres from transportation to heating and cooking; another is the anticipated hike in demand for electricity from AI and data centers. 

A study conducted by the ISO projected that, though electricity use in New England has trended down for years, it will soon rise once more, said Eric Johnson, executive director of external affairs at ISO-NE.

But the legal restrictions on how the different New England states will meet that rising demand vary. And in states that are reaching to meet clean energy targets, nuclear is appealing for its low emissions compared to fossil fuels. 

New Hampshire is the only state in New England without a legally binding commitment to lower greenhouse gas emissions. The state does have a renewable portfolio standard, a policy that sets targets for electricity distributors about the amount of energy they buy and sell that is renewable; it topped out in 2025, requiring utilities to procure or offset 22.2% renewable energy thereafter. The policy has faced attempts from legislators to scale it back in recent sessions.

Meanwhile, Rhode Island has an emissions target that Acting Commissioner of the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources Christopher Kearns on Wednesday said is “the most aggressive … in the U.S.,” calling for the state to achieve net-zero emissions by 2033. A recent amendment added nuclear to the energy sources that qualify as clean energy under that standard, Kearns said.

The state of Maine has set a 2040 deadline for 100% clean electricity, and Massachusetts has a 2050 deadline, with a goal along the way to halve emissions by 2030. Connecticut’s goals include achieving zero-carbon energy by 2040 and net-zero by 2050. But in addition to the state’s climate goals, said Emma Cimino, acting commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the state is motivated to improve air quality, and that informs their affinity for low-emissions nuclear.

“Connecticut has real air quality challenges,” she said.

Vermont’s Global Warming Solutions Act requires the state to reduce emissions to 80% of 1990 levels by 2050, in line with the standards of the 2015 Paris Agreement. (However, the state appears to have missed an initial incremental deadline for their emissions reductions that was set for 2025.)

Johnson, of the Vermont Department of Public Service, said his department’s interest in nuclear energy was driven chiefly by concern about the effects of climate change on Vermonters.

“What’s driving a lot of our views on energy is affordability and extreme weather from climate change, which is also impacting affordability. It is happening. It’s causing extreme events, in particular on a more and more vulnerable grid, and it’s impacting those least able to pay,” he said.

Several states identified possible sites for nuclear development within their borders: New Hampshire’s Seabrook Station and Connecticut’s Millstone nuclear plants were both raised as options by representatives of the two states. Connecticut is also providing funding through a dedicated legislature-created fund for communities that are interested in exploring becoming hosts for a new nuclear site, Cimino said.

Johnson pitched the site of the former Vermont Yankee plant as a potential place to restart nuclear generation in Vermont.

Vermont Yankee closed in 2014, and Johnson said he expects its disassembly and decommissioning to be complete by the end of this year. The full process has consumed most of the $602 million trust fund set aside for the process, according to the Brattleboro Reformer. 

Johnson said the high-voltage transmission lines that have outlived the plant would allow another to take its place. 

Challenges in common

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Amid enthusiastic speeches, Wednesday’s speakers also identified a series of barriers to further nuclear development in New England.

One is the significant cost of constructing nuclear power plants.

Examples cited on Wednesday included Seabrook Station, which bankrupted the utility that set out to build it in the 1990s, and the most recent new nuclear plant constructed in the U.S.: Georgia’s Vogtle plant, which finished $17 billion over budget. 

Another barrier is that the small modular reactors championed by innovators are still far from being grid-ready, said John Parsons, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

“It’s wonderful that we have these startup companies that we’re going to hear about late in the day today,” said Parsons, referring to multiple companies angling to begin producing small modular nuclear reactors featured at the event, including the Portsmouth-based startup StarCube.

Those companies are “fantastic, good for the economy, good for, you know, the vibrancy of our society,” he said. But, he added, “it’s not going to put any electrons on the grid tomorrow.”

Michelle Gardner, executive director of regulatory affairs in the Northeast for the utility NextEra Energy Resources, which owns Seabrook Station, echoed that. For now, NextEra is considering more traditional, larger-scale technologies for any possible near-term developments, she said. 

There’s also the matter of waste. 

The United States Department of Energy is charged with finding a long-term storage site for high-level nuclear waste, which must be isolated from humans for the thousands of years it remains dangerously radioactive. But attempts to identify a site for an underground repository have, so far, fallen flat. In the interim, nuclear waste is stored on-site at reactors, typically in concrete casks, where utilities are paid by the federal government to store it.

The issue of finding a solution for waste storage is “one of the biggest problems” in efforts to increase nuclear power worldwide, said Sunil Felix, nuclear counselor at the French embassy in Washington, D.C.

France, which is a significant user of nuclear power, manages spent fuel with a combination of fuel reprocessing and underground repository storage, Felix said. He added that in addition to a way of lowering emissions, France views the power source as a route to energy independence, as it lacks other natural resources that could supply energy. 

The unresolved issue of what to do with nuclear waste in the U.S. factors heavily in another issue identified by speakers on Wednesday: Public distrust of nuclear power.

“There’s people who strongly oppose it because they strongly oppose it, and fair enough. What are we doing with the waste? … Those are fair and legitimate questions,” Johnson said.

On Wednesday morning, demonstrators gathered outside the summit, raising protest signs and seabird puppets toward conference-bound attendees.

Deb Katz lives near a waste storage facility at the location of the former Yankee Rowe power plant in Massachusetts. She said officials had lost her trust by failing to chart a path forward for the management of dangerous nuclear waste, leaving communities to bear the burden.

“There is high-level nuclear waste trapped at reactor sites throughout New England, with nowhere to go, with no solution,” she said. “And instead of dealing with that problem with the federal government, the nuclear industry, they just want to do it again. That’s a slap in the face to reactor communities that were promised there would be no waste left on-site when the reactors shuttered.”

Another demonstrator towed a model of the dry casks used to store spent fuel around the block in the bed of a pickup truck, while demonstrators joined their voices, chanting, “the cost too high, and the waste, don’t lie.”

New Hampshire officials want to lead — but they say that doesn’t mean being first

In his remarks on a six-state panel Wednesday, New Hampshire Director of Energy Innovation Thomas Barrasso said he did not expect his state to be the first to adopt new nuclear technologies. 

“We do not want to be the first of a kind, we want to be the Nth of a kind,” he said. “We’re not an experimental state.”

But New Hampshire does have a history of industry, and Barrasso said he hoped the state would find a way to stand out in its embrace of nuclear power.

“We need to figure out how New Hampshire is going to lead the way on some of these things, which may be doing something at Seabrook, may be doing something at another location,” he said.