The town recently reached a lucrative three-year tax agreement with the NextEra Energy Seabrook nuclear power plant that will put millions more dollars in tax coffers than the previous agreement.
Seabrook Town Manager Bill Manzi said the town and NextEra Energy Resources, the owner and operator of NextEra Energy Seabrook, successfully negotiated an agreement concerning property tax payments covering fiscal years 2024, 2025 and 2026. The accord is for $45 million over the three years, Manzi said, an increase of $5 million, or 12.5%, over the previous three-year agreement.
Additionally, the new agreement is a $9 million increase from the one reached six years ago, which was worth $36 million, Manzi said.
Over the decades since Seabrook Station began operations in 1990, the assessed value of nuclear power plants has generally declined. At its peak, Seabrook was valued at more than $2 billion, while at its lowest, it fell below $1 billion.
Years ago, the town decided to enter into pre-negotiated property tax agreements with NextEra instead of haggling over annual property tax assessments, some of which ended up with the power plant’s owners taking the town to court. Since then, the town and NextEra have worked to agree on a tax figure to ensure a reliable income for the town without the possible expense of litigation.
According to the World Nuclear Association, “The basic economics metric for any generating plant is the levelized cost of electricity,” or the “total cost to build and operate a power plant over its lifetime divided by the total electricity output dispatched from the plant over that period, hence typically cost per megawatt hour.”
The Seabrook Station nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. (File photo by Rich Beauchesne, Seacoastonline)
Seabrook Station is located on 900 acres of Seacoast land. In 2019, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission extended Seabrook Station’s operating license by 20 years from its original 2030 date to 2050, or 60 years total.
Along with its property, a power plant is valued at the amount it can earn from selling the watts of electricity it produces for the grid versus the amount it costs to generate it. In addition, as the move towards less fossil fuel-generated energy swells, interest in nuclear power has increased in recent years.
According to the Nuclear NH Study Commission, Seabrook Station’s electrical output is 1,244 megawatts. It is the largest single-unit, individual electrical generating unit on the New England power grid, according to the commission, the second largest nuclear plant in New England after Connecticut’s two-unit Millstone Nuclear Power Plant.
Seabrook Station operates at full capacity nearly every day of the year, according to the Nuclear NH Study Commission, making “enough energy for approximately 1.4 million homes and businesses ... roughly 50% of New Hampshire’s total in-state electricity net generation.”
Originally built by Public Service of New Hampshire, Seabrook Station has been owned and operated by NextEra Energy Resources since 2002.
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