Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant


The Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant, more commonly known as Seabrook Station, is a nuclear power plant located in Seabrook, New Hampshire, United States, approximately north of Boston and south of Portsmouth. Two units were planned, but the second unit was never completed due to construction delays, cost overruns, and troubles obtaining financing. The construction permit for the plant was granted in 1976, and construction on Unit 1 was completed in 1986. Full power operation of Unit 1 began in 1990. Unit 2 has been canceled and most of its major components sold to other plants. With its 1,244-megawatt electrical output, Seabrook Unit 1 is the largest individual electrical generating unit on the New England power grid. It is the second largest nuclear plant in New England after the two-unit Millstone Nuclear Power Plant in Connecticut.

History

The Public Service Company of New Hampshire initially sought plans for building Seabrook Station in 1966 with construction plans finalized in 1972. Construction began in 1976 with cooperation amongst sixteen utility groups.
In 1984, due to continuing financial and regulatory problems, the owners canceled construction of the second reactor unit at 25% completion after $800 million spent. Construction of Reactor Unit 1 was eventually completed in 1986, but shortly thereafter in 1988, the large debt involved led to the bankruptcy of Seabrook's major utility owner, Public Service Company of New Hampshire. At the time, this was the fourth largest bankruptcy in United States corporate history.
The construction of Seabrook Station was completed ten years later than expected, with a cost approaching $7 billion. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission described its own regulatory oversight of Seabrook as "a paradigm of fragmented and uncoordinated government decision making," and "a system strangling itself and the economy in red tape."
The plant was originally owned by more than 10 separate utility companies serving five New England states. In 2002, most sold their shares to FPL Energy, later known as NextEra Energy Resources, for a controlling 88.2% share of Seabrook Station at a total cost of $836.6 million. The remaining portion is owned by municipal utilities in Massachusetts. The station is one of five nuclear generating facilities operated by parent company NextEra Energy. The other four are St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant and Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station operated by sister company Florida Power & Light, and the Duane Arnold Energy Center and Point Beach Nuclear Generating Station operated by NextEra Energy Resources.
During the 2008 presidential election, Republican nominee John McCain mentioned the possibility of building the once-planned second reactor at Seabrook. The idea drew cautious support from some officials, but would be difficult due to financial and regulatory reasons.
In 2017, due to the steady drop in value of nuclear power plants including Seabrook Station, the town of Seabrook enacted a 9.9 percent tax increase to offset the decrease in tax revenue collected from the plant's owner, NextEra Energy.

Relicensing

In 2010, Seabrook Station applied to have its operating license extended from 2030 to 2050. In September 2012, Massachusetts Reps. Edward Markey and John F. Tierney filed H.R. 6554, titled the "Nuclear Reactor Safety First Act", which would have prevented nuclear plants from receiving license extensions from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission if they applied more than 10 years before their licenses expired. The legislation was specifically aimed at Seabrook Station's license extension, but the bill never proceeded out of House Committee.
During the relicensing process, there were safety concerns pertaining to concrete degradation at the plant due to alkali–silica reaction because of ground-water infiltration into various structure foundations, which prompted concerns from various local politicians. In June 2017, Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials "reviewed numerous documents and inspected the plant as it gauge NextEra's safety plan to monitor and manage the alkali-silica reaction phenomenon present in concrete throughout the power plant". In October 2017, federal regulators allowed the non-profit nuclear watchdog group C-10 to weigh in on the license amendment request.
On March 12, 2019, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced it would be renewing the operating license of Seabrook Station for an additional 20 years, expiring on March 15, 2050. Following the license extension announcement, the group C-10 filed an emergency petition to the NRC in an attempt to prevent any license extension until further hearings on ASR were held, which was denied by the NRC in July 2019.

Community impact

In 2013, the Nuclear Energy Institute released a study showing the positive impact of Seabrook Station on the economy and environment. Key findings are listed below.
Seabrook Station has been cited as crucial for allowing Massachusetts to comply with carbon emission legal requirements, which was also evidenced by the closure of Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in 2015 causing carbon emissions to rise in New England for the first time in five years. According to projections by ISO New England, any decrease in electricity production in the region would not be expected to be replaced by renewable energy and instead would be replaced by natural gas.
In April 2018, the New Hampshire Office of Strategic Initiatives released the state's 10-year state energy strategy that cited "preserving Seabrook Station as a source of zero-carbon energy is the most realistic and cost-effective means of managing emissions in New Hampshire at scale".

Noteworthy events

In 1998, a plant electrician was laid off shortly after raising a safety concern with a system wiring configuration. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission initiated an investigation into the matter, and determined that this action was a violation involving discrimination against an employee for raising a safety concern. This event resulted in an NRC Severity Level III violation and a $55,000 civil penalty.
In 2005, a security fence installed by a subcontracted engineering firm failed a NRC inspection and was declared inoperable, which resulted in a fine of $65,000 by the NRC since "both design of the system and testing procedures did not adhere to NRC guidelines".
In 2012, the southern Maine coast experienced a magnitude 4.0 earthquake during Seabrook Station's refueling outage. An "Unusual Event" emergency classification was declared, but there was no impact to the plant or disruption in refueling activities.
In 2013, Seabrook Station and the workers' union reached a last-minute contract agreement within hours of expiring that would have resulted in a lockout.
In 2014, a small electrical fire originating from an elevator motor resulted in the declaration of an "Unusual Event" emergency classification. There were no injuries, evacuations, or threat to public safety from the event.
In 2015, a Seabrook Station security guard had stuffed a rifle barrel with an ear plug and two rolled up pieces of paper, which was later found during rifle cleaning. The event prompted an NRC investigation, and the security guard was banned for three years from involvement in all NRC-licensed activities.
In 2018, a magnitude 2.7 earthquake occurred approximately 10 miles from Seabrook Station, but the earthquake did not trigger any emergency procedures or result in any signs of structural damage to the plant.
In mid-2020, Seabrook Station experienced two unplanned shutdowns due to a set of control rods unexpectedly inserting into the reactor core. In both cases, all safety systems responded appropriately with the reactor being safely shut down.

Public opposition

In the eight years before construction started at Seabrook, residents had opposed the plant before regulatory agencies and in a town meeting vote. Spurred on by the failure of these methods, and the success of a large anti-nuclear site occupation in Whyl, Germany, local people formed the Clamshell Alliance.
On August 1, 1976, 600 protestors rallied at the Seabrook Station construction site. In May 1977, more than 2,000 protestors, including 1,400 members of the Clamshell Alliance, occupied the site. Of the protestors, 1,414 were arrested and held for two weeks after most refused bail.
Another vocal opponent of the plant was then Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, who blocked the opening for several years due to environmental issues as well as concern about emergency evacuation plans. The NRC had stipulated that workable evacuation plans needed to be in place for all towns within a radius of the plant. Four Massachusetts towns were within the ten-mile radius, and thus Governor Dukakis' approval of evacuation plans was required.
A lawsuit complaining that the plant would cause thermal pollution was launched by anti-nuclear opposition. This was rejected without merit, but it delayed construction by 7.5 months.
These protests and lawsuits are the reason the plant cost double initial estimates.
In September 2017, activist Steve Comley Sr. along with his non-profit "We The People" paid for an electronic billboard in Salisbury, Massachusetts allegedly warning of the absence of an evacuation plan in the event of an accident at Seabrook Station. In January 2018, the town of Merrimac, Massachusetts joined half a dozen other communities "calling for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to hold a hearing on whether the Seabrook, New Hampshire, nuclear power plant's evacuation plan can be effectively implemented". In response, NextEra Energy released the following statement:
In April 2020, Massachusetts members of the U.S. Congress that included U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey and Congressman Seth Moulton called on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and NextEra Energy to release the pandemic plan for Seabrook Station in response to COVID-19. The letter was submitted in response to the ongoing refueling outage bringing hundreds of workers on site with concerns over safety procedures and plant staffing. Seabrook Station was also granted regulatory exemptions from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to aid in its preventative efforts against the spread of COVID-19 including loosening work-hour controls and deferring certain inspections.

Accident analysis

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of, concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, and an ingestion pathway zone of about, concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity. The 2010 U.S. population within of Seabrook was 118,747, an increase of 10.1 percent in a decade. The 2010 U.S. population within was 4,315,571, an increase of 8.7 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Boston.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at Seabrook was 1 in 45,455, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.