Half a century after thousands protested at Seabrook, Governor Ayotte wants to put New Hampshire at the forefront of a new generation of nuclear power. The loudest applause of her State of the State came when she said it.
By Granite State Report
Concord, NH – In the spring of 1977, more than 1,400 people were arrested at the construction site of the Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant in one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in American history. The Clamshell Alliance, a grassroots coalition of fishermen, farmers, and activists, had made the coastal New Hampshire plant a national symbol of the anti-nuclear movement. The protests stretched across years, drew tens of thousands, and helped define an era of environmental politics in the Granite State.
Nearly fifty years later, Governor Kelly Ayotte stood before a joint session of the New Hampshire legislature and received the loudest applause of her entire State of the State address for a single declaration: she was directing the Department of Energy to build pathways for the next generation of nuclear power in New Hampshire.
The reversal is not just political. It is generational, technological, and driven by an energy crisis that has made New Hampshire’s electric bills among the highest in the country. Whether the state can turn the governor’s applause line into actual reactors is another question entirely—one that involves billions of dollars, unproven technology, a thin workforce, and the ghosts of Seabrook.
The Giant on the Seacoast
The irony of New Hampshire’s nuclear story is that the state already runs on nuclear power—and has for decades. Seabrook Station, the plant the Clamshell Alliance tried to stop, is the second-largest nuclear facility in New England. It generates roughly 1,250 megawatts of carbon-free electricity, enough to power more than a million homes, and accounts for a significant share of the region’s baseload power. It operates around the clock, through winter cold snaps and summer heat waves, producing electricity without burning a molecule of fossil fuel.
Seabrook’s owner, NextEra Energy, has indicated interest in expanding nuclear capacity at sites it already manages. But the company has been careful to temper expectations. In a statement provided to NHPR, NextEra said it is evaluating new nuclear technologies as potential long-term solutions, but has no current plans for a new reactor at Seabrook.
That gap—between interest and plans, between aspiration and construction—defines the challenge Ayotte’s initiative will face.
Small Reactors, Big Promises
The nuclear energy Ayotte is talking about does not look like Seabrook. The new generation of nuclear technology centers on two concepts: small modular reactors, which are scaled-down versions of traditional light-water reactors, and advanced reactors that use different fuels and cooling systems and have not yet reached commercial scale. Both promise to be safer, cheaper, and faster to build than the enormous plants of the twentieth century. Both are attracting enormous investment, particularly from technology companies that need reliable, carbon-free power for data centers and artificial intelligence infrastructure.
But neither is ready for New Hampshire tomorrow. Spencer Toohill, chief of staff for nuclear energy innovation at The Breakthrough Institute, told NHPR that a state starting to explore new nuclear is looking at five to six years at the earliest before anything comes online. The barriers are formidable: siting a facility requires community support in a state with painful nuclear memories, the construction workforce does not exist locally and would need to be built, and the supply chain for advanced nuclear components is still taking shape nationally.
Sam Evans-Brown, who leads Clean Energy New Hampshire, offered a blunter assessment of the timeline. He acknowledged that there is exciting activity across the nuclear industry nationally, but noted that none of it is near-term and none of it is in New England.
High Bills, Hot Politics
Ayotte’s nuclear push is inseparable from the broader politics of energy in New Hampshire. The state’s electricity rates are among the highest in the nation, a perennial source of frustration for residents and a drag on the state’s economic competitiveness. In her State of the State address, Ayotte blamed neighboring New England states and their clean energy investments for driving up regional power costs, dismissing what she called their “net zero religion.” She also criticized the Public Utilities Commission for failing to put ratepayers first.
The framing was deliberate. Ayotte positioned nuclear not as a climate solution—she did not mention climate change in her address—but as an affordability solution: reliable, always-on power that could bring rates down without the intermittency of wind and solar. The approach reflects a political calculation that in New Hampshire, where no income or sales tax exists and property taxes are already unsustainable, the way to sell any energy policy is through the electric bill.
Democrats pushed back, arguing that Ayotte bears some responsibility for rising costs and that her rhetoric about other states’ clean energy policies ignores the economic and environmental benefits those investments are producing. Consumer Advocate Don Kreis, while praising Ayotte for making electric rates a priority, expressed concern that the word “foster” in her nuclear directive might be a code word for subsidies—a prospect that could put taxpayers and ratepayers on the hook for an unproven technology.
The Man Who Changed His Mind
Perhaps the most striking voice in the nuclear debate is Armond Cohen, executive director of the Clean Air Task Force. As a young lawyer, Cohen helped lead the legal efforts to prevent Seabrook from being built. He was part of the movement that defined nuclear power as an unacceptable risk. Now, decades later, he has reversed his position.
What changed his mind was climate change. Cohen has come to believe that New England has very few options for decarbonizing its electrical grid, and that the region will eventually need a source of power that is dispatchable, always available, and carbon-free. Wind and solar are growing, but they are intermittent. Natural gas produces emissions. Hydropower from Canada faces transmission bottlenecks. Nuclear, Cohen now argues, is the technology that fills the gap—if the industry can solve its cost and construction problems.
Cohen’s conversion mirrors a broader shift in the environmental movement. Nationally, a growing number of climate scientists, policy analysts, and former nuclear skeptics have concluded that meeting emissions targets without nuclear power is somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible. The question is no longer whether nuclear has a role, but whether the industry can deliver on its promises of smaller, cheaper, faster reactors before the window for meaningful climate action closes.
The Long Road from Applause to Atoms
Ayotte’s directive is a starting point, not a destination. The consortium she has called for—bringing together stakeholders, lawmakers, and nuclear-focused organizations—has no timeline, no budget, and no specific technology in mind. Legislation is moving through the State House that would allow utilities to own nuclear reactors and include nuclear in the state’s definition of clean energy, steps that would remove legal obstacles but not solve the fundamental challenges of cost, siting, and public acceptance.
New Hampshire has not built a nuclear plant in a long time. The construction of Seabrook, which began in 1976 and did not produce commercial power until 1990, was a financial catastrophe that bankrupted its original utility and left ratepayers covering the costs for decades. That history is not lost on the communities that would need to host a new facility, nor on the lawmakers who would need to approve the regulatory framework for one.
And yet the applause in Representatives Hall was real, bipartisan, and loud. Something has changed in New Hampshire’s relationship with nuclear power. The protesters of the 1970s were fighting against a technology they feared. The governor of the 2020s is reaching for a technology she believes the state needs. Between those two positions lies fifty years of experience, a warming climate, an electricity bill that keeps going up, and a state that has always preferred to solve its own problems on its own terms.
Whether the Granite State can actually build a next-generation reactor remains to be seen. But the fact that a New Hampshire governor can stand before the legislature and call for more nuclear power—and receive the loudest ovation of the night—says something about how far the conversation has traveled from the marshes of Seabrook.
Sources: NHPR, New Hampshire Bulletin, Valley News, InDepthNH.org, Keene Sentinel, Cape and Islands/New England News Collaborative, The Breakthrough Institute, Clean Energy New Hampshire, and NextEra Energy.
