\nThere followed a decade of other protests at the site, inside\nregulatory chambers, and in New Hampshire and Washington courtrooms.\nThe 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear-power plant in\nPennsylvania—to name but one event that triggered concern\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n
\nabout ecological and safety issues—played a significant role\nin these protests. So did delays imposed through public\nintervention, slow regulatory approvals, and two significant labor\nstrikes. PSNH had to borrow money to meet ever-escalating costs. In\n1978 the company had been authorized to charge customers for the\ncarrying costs of loans to build the Seabrook plant. New legislation\nstated that PSNH could not recover any investment in the Seabrook\nStation until the plant provided electricity to its customers.\nDeprived of CWIP costs (Construction Works in Progress, known as\nstranded costs), PSNH had to borrow even more heavily at a time of\nhigh interest rates. The N.P. Public Utilities Commission (NHPUC)\nordered PSNH to reduce its ownership in the plant from 50 percent to\n35.6 percent. In March 1984 the joint owners canceled Seabrook Unit\nII and formed New Hampshire Yankee, a separate division of PSNH, to\nmanage the construction of Unit I and bring it into operation.\n\nSeabrook Unit I was completed in July 1986 at a cost of $4.5 billion\nbut did not go into full operation until August 19, 1990, at which\ntime PSNH had not yet recovered any of the construction costs.\nSeabrook’s final cost was $6.6 billion and PSNH’s share of the debt\nwas $2.9 billion. In May 1986 PSNH asked the NHPUC for a two-step\nrate increase; however, the agency ruled against the request. In a\nfinal effort to remain solvent, PSNH appealed NHPUC’s decision by\nfiling for a 15 percent emergency rate increase and asked the New\nHampshire Supreme Court to suspend the Anti-CWIP law.\n
\nLate 1980s-90s: Bankruptcy and Restructuring\n
\nOn January 26, 1988, the court ruled that the Anti-CWIP statute was\nconstitutional and prevented PSNH from receiving the emergency rate\nincrease. Two days later, on January 28, PSNH filed for protection\nunder Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code and became the first\ninvestor-owned utility since the Great Depression to declare\nbankruptcy.\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After years of protests and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania, the New Hampshire legislature passed a law that denied the Public Service Company of New Hampshire (PSNH) Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) charges before the Seabrook nuclear plant provided electricity to its customers. One of two planned Seabrook reactors did finally go […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,40,142,14,8,18,2910,104,21,22,73],"tags":[2911,2912,1323,8746,8704,713,2914,2913,2194,8861,8737,633,1002,999,899,902],"class_list":["post-1024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-community","category-cwip","category-economy","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-new-hampshire","category-nuclear","category-planning","category-politics","category-safety","tag-bankruptcy","tag-chapter-11","tag-construction-work-in-progress","tag-cwip","tag-economy","tag-financing","tag-funding","tag-great-depression","tag-late","tag-new-hampshire","tag-nuclear","tag-over-budget","tag-psnh","tag-public-service-company-of-new-hampshire","tag-seabrook","tag-three-mile-island"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-gw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"http:\/\/www.psnh.com\/uploadedImages\/psnhcom\/CompanyInformation\/Seabrook.jpg\")
<\/a>\nprovided electricity to its customers.\nOne of two planned Seabrook reactors did finally go into service in 1990,\nmore than a decade late and far over budget.\nMeanwhile,\nthe New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled the anti-CWIP law was constitutional,\nand PSNH went bankrupt in 1988:\n