Is the Clamshell Alliance out of its mind?
We know the numbers. In 2013, Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen published a paper where they concluded that nuclear power was responsible for preventing 64 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions from being pumped into the atmosphere, and along with it saving an estimated 1.84 million preventable air pollution-related premature deaths from 1971 to 2009.
The Clamshell Alliance contributed to the cessation of construction of Seabrook’s Unit 2, and the broader anti-nuclear energy culture helped lead to over 100 reactor orders canceled throughout the 70s and 80s, dozens of them after construction had begun. We have the perspective of Germany to compare to, which, in the years following the Fukushima accident, closed down almost all of its nuclear power plants. And Professors Stephen Jarvis, Olivier Deschenes and Akshaya Jha in 2022 published their own paper where they estimated that more than 1,100 excess deaths occurred annually due to the closures.
It wasn’t enough that it left decades of environmental devastation in its wake. For half a century, the Clamshell movement and those like it have helped make nuclear energy harder, slower and more expensive to build, while New England continued burning fossil fuels. Now, in the name of environmental stewardship, it wants to keep us from doing better by our children than its generation did by theirs.
They say that the nuclear power plants “remain as dangerous as ever.” Is that to say, among the safest energy we have? Nuclear is shown to cause 0.03 deaths per terawatt-hour compared to solar’s 0.02 and wind’s 0.04. To say nothing of the fact that that number counts every one of the 2,300 Fukushima evacuation deaths as nuclear deaths, and how modern nuclear reactors have substantial safety improvements compared to their legacy counterparts.
Nuclear is as safe as wind and solar.
Now, it is true that solar and wind can be built now, but when it comes to here in New Hampshire, I must ask, built where? Our state is 83% forest, sits at a northern latitude and sees days to weeks of weather where the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. A “Dunkelflaute,” or “dark lull.” That means building three to six times as much solar and wind as the reactor it replaces, just to match its output over a year.
Importantly, none of that solves the Dunkelflaute, and along with the overbuild comes land usage. Land that is immensely valuable, not just economically, but spiritually. To replace Seabrook alone it would require around 1,000 turbines across 350 ridgeline miles. On the federal government’s own map, every suitable ridge in New Hampshire would produce less than one Seabrook, which would leave us looking toward the Pemigewasset, the Presidentials; we would trade our common heritage and still come up short.
The other side of the environmental coin is emissions, and to say nuclear can’t compete with renewables on climate impact is in contrast to the actual numbers. The 2022 UNECE Report on lifecycle emissions showed that nuclear at its worst produced 6.4 grams of CO₂ eq./kWh, compared to wind’s between 7.8 and 16 g CO₂ eq./kWh for onshore, and 12 and 23 g CO₂ eq./kWh for offshore turbines, and solar’s 8.0–83 g CO₂ eq./ kWh. Which energy source actually reduces emissions? It’s not the one that leaves us burning oil in January to keep the lights on.
The complaint that small modular reactors (SMRs) exist only on paper is unfortunately timed, as the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Ontario is already constructing a GE-Hitachi BWRX-300 SMR, and the NRC on the same day as the complaint issued a construction permit for one at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Clinch River site. Overseas the Chinese Linglong One is undergoing its precommissioning tests and the Russian Akademik Lomonosov floating SMR has been operating since 2020.
Meanwhile the claim that no permanent storage site for nuclear waste exists anywhere is equally false. The Finnish Onkalo facility is in final commissioning.
So when the New England leaders met last week to talk about building nuclear power, they weren’t out of their minds. They’d simply looked at the numbers. Our grid doesn’t run on a theoretical cheap megawatt-hour. It relies on the megawatt that is available in the dark of winter when the wind isn’t blowing. That isn’t fantasy. That’s realism.
I hope they’ll look at one more thing. That construction permit went to the Tennessee Valley Authority, a public power authority. The time has come to look at one of our own: no shareholders, just its ratepayers. A New Hampshire public power authority, responsible for ensuring a green, resilient, abundant grid for decades to come.
Kyle Haines is a certificated airline pilot, resident of Merrimack, and a candidate for New Hampshire State Representative in Hillsborough District 12.