Resurging interest in nuclear energy generation summoned state leaders, industry professionals and watchdogs to Lowell, Mass., on Thursday, when the National Governors Association convened a nuclear policy summit.
Inside the Meehan Student Center at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, speakers batted around the region’s energy constraints, climate goals, new nuclear technologies and approach to safety, and public trust. Perspectives ranged from unbridled enthusiasm to cautious acceptance of nuclear as part of New England’s energy future.
Tom Barrasso, director of energy innovation at the New Hampshire Department of Energy, said the Granite State is exiting preliminary discussions and entering a “roadmap” phase, having taken note of the positive reaction to Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s comments about advanced nuclear at the State of the State address earlier this year.
“That segment of the speech got, I think, the largest standing ovation and the largest round of applause,” Barrasso said. “How to do that, of course, falls on my desk.”
Barrasso said a final road map guiding the state’s attitude toward new nuclear generation will be released in 2028. New Hampshire is “not an experimental state,” he added, but there are areas, such as industry and workforce development, where the state will lead.
“We do not want to be the first of a kind; we want to be the end of a kind,” he said.
ISO-New England, the energy grid shared by the region’s six states, forecasts a 9% increase in energy demand over the next decade, and 25% of the region’s energy already comes from existing nuclear sites at Seabrook Station in southern New Hampshire and the Millstone Power Station in Connecticut.
Seabrook’s license is set to expire in March 2050.
The federal government is also driving the political momentum behind nuclear energy. In 2024, President Joe Biden signed the ADVANCE Act, directing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to accelerate development of advanced nuclear technologies, marching orders enlarged by President Donald Trump through executive orders that, combined, aim to quadruple the country’s commercial nuclear capacity by 2050.
NRC Commissioner David Wright said the agency is moving quickly to meet those mandates.
“It’s widely recognized that we are standing at a historic inflection point as our nation and the global community undergo dynamic energy transformation,” Wright said. “Advanced reactors, small reactors, small modulars, and micro reactors, they’re going to be needed, too, and they’re certainly going to be a big part of the mix but […] we’re going to have to build more big plants. I want to emphasize this point: The NRC stands ready to do it all.”
Safety should be embedded at the heart of innovation, he said, but when it comes to progress, the NRC “will not be the roadblock.”
Nuclear is considered a clean, but not renewable, energy source because it is low-carbon-emitting, but the question of what to do with spent fuel and radioactive wastewater triggers other environmental concerns. The United States does not recycle nuclear waste because of fears dating back to the Carter administration that separating plutonium from spent fuel could accelerate the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
In Plymouth, Mass., where the closed Pilgrim nuclear power plant is being decommissioned, the state barred plant owner Holtec International from discharging industrial wastewater into Cape Cod Bay. The company is now evaporating that water, once again raising environmental concerns, this time over air pollution.
Industry leaders say advanced nuclear reactors — a category of technology that ranges from design-stage, unproven small modular reactors to the AP1000 pressurized water reactors recently deployed at Plant Vogtle in Georgia — hold promise for the future.
Erica Tillotson, manager of government and international affairs for Westinghouse Electric Co., represented the AP1000 manufacturer at the summit. If its reactor had been in use in Fukushima, when an earthquake and ensuing tsunami led to nuclear disaster in 2011, Tillotson claimed that its ability to go 72 hours without human intervention would have prevented an accident from occurring.
Meanwhile, outside, a small demonstration of anti-nuclear activists held the line of absolute resistance, many of them, like Chris Nord, longtime pacifists and environmental advocates affiliated with the Clamshell Alliance.
Fifty years ago, Nord was arrested while protesting construction of Seabrook Station, and he went on to become a founding member of the C-10 Research and Education Foundation, which monitors radiation emissions at the nuclear power plant.
Nord and others took aim at Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey for filing legislation to repeal Chapter 503, a law that requires voter consent for any new nuclear power construction in the state.
“This takes any debate over this issue out of the public sphere and puts it squarely in the realm of lobbyists and their promises of large campaign contributions. This is a corruption of our democratic process, and we should not let it happen,” Nord said.
Healey, in announcing the summit, said New Hampshire’s southern neighbor will be taking an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy.
None of the region’s governors attended the summit.
