The fossil fuel industry loves to push the idea of nuclear power because it pushes out the adoption of other sources of clean energy. The idea of “cheap” nuclear power somewhere down the road keeps hope alive and kills faster and cheaper to deploy alternatives.
Here in the planned community of Eastman in the Upper Valley of New England you’ll find a lot of homes built in the late 70s and the go go building boom of the early 1980s. A lot of them have electric resistance baseboard heating (now supplemented with heat pumps, gas heaters, pellet stoves or gas stoves).
Why would anyone try to heat their New England homes with one of the most inefficient, expensive type of heating? Electric baseboards are cheaper to install than a boiler or furnace, and many were fooled into believing that “cheap” nuclear power was coming soon.
Home Builders Wary of One Oil Crisis After Another
Home builders in the early 80s had lived through one oil crisis after another and were eager to grasp at the straws promised by the nuclear projects.
In 1973, an oil embargo by the Gulf oil-producing nations, designed to punish the U.S. for backing Israel, created severe fuel shortages, long lines at gas stations, and new laws like lower speed limits. Global oil prices quadrupled from about $2.90 to nearly $11.65 per barrel.
Then in 1979 a second major oil shock occurred due to the Iranian Revolution, which disrupted production and spiked prices again.
So the promise of heating one’s home with nuclear-generated electricity was seen as a solution to unstable fossil fuel prices.
The Nuclear Plant that Never Came to Be
Seabrook Station Unit 2 was the promised nuclear plant that never came to New Hampshire.
The planned twin sister reactor to the state’s lone operating nuclear reactor, which was officially scrapped and abandoned in 1986 while 25% complete.
When the project was proposed in 1972 by the Public Service Company of New Hampshire (PSNH), it promised a highly ambitious, dual-reactor mega-station.
Both reactors were supposed to cost less than $1 billion combined and begin providing massive amounts of cheap energy by 1981.
Instead, the second reactor became one of the most famous “ghost” projects in the history of American energy. The “promised” plant vanished due to a cascade of financial, social, and political disasters
Nuclear Power Today in New Hampshire
Cost overruns and a public wary of nuclear disasters like Three Mile Island and Chornobyl led the original power company into bankruptcy.
While Unit 2 was abandoned—leaving behind an unfinished mass of rods and a dome monument to the failure—Unit 1 did eventually cross the finish line. It went commercially online in 1990 at an ultimate cost of $6.2 billion.
Today, Seabrook Station Unit 1 is owned by NextEra Energy Resources and generates roughly 44% of New Hampshire’s electricity, serving as a stark reminder of the massive energy empire that was promised but only half-delivered.
And yet, New Hampshire and the entire New England grid continue to have some of the most expensive electricity rates in the country, relying on imported LNG to power turbines for the majority of the power.
The Reality of Nuclear Power
- 93% of fuel for nuclear plants is imported
- We still don’t know how to hand nuclear waste excect to bury it
- Hot water waste from cooling towers is an environmental issue
- Nuclear plants require a lot of reliable water for cooling. Climate change and droughts have caused plants to shut down.
- No one wants to live in the evacuation zone
- Nuclear takes decades to build and is expensive to build
- Nuclear plants provide target for terrorists
- The alternatives to nuclear – solar and wind plus batteries can be built out cheaper, faster, and safer