Issues at Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant
RADIOACTIVE RELEASES AND EXPOSURE
Since its startup in 1990, the Seabrook nuclear power plant has been responsible for both routine and accidental releases of radioactive fission by-products to our air and water, as have all nuclear power plants. Most notably, leakage of radioactive hydrogen, or tritium, was first identified and reported in 1999, when the plant was in operation for less than a decade. Despite mitigation efforts, tritium-contaminated water continues to leak out and contaminate groundwater and coastal waters, though officials claim at “safe” levels.
While public health impacts from radioactive releases are exceedingly difficult to identify and quantify, our concerns are founded on the conclusions of the National Academy of Sciences’ BEIR VII report that there is no safe level of radiation and that any increase in radioactive exposure will increase one’s risk of cancer and other health effects. More specifically, several scientific studies both in Europe as well as the U.S. have found statistically significant increases in childhood leukemia in the vicinity of operating nuclear plants.
CDC data also shows that New Hampshire in particular has the highest childhood cancer rates in the country and a further analysis of this data found higher rates in Rockingham County - where Seabrook is located - than in other New Hampshire counties in years after the plant began operations.
A more recent State identification of a rare childhood cancer cluster in Seacoast New Hampshire without any identified cause is all the more disturbing in this context, since the communities where it was found are downwind of the Seabrook plant. Of course, correlation does not equal causation, but these reports ought to at least stimulate additional epidemiological studies around nuclear plants, something the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has steadfastly refused to pursue.
Seabrook Station does not employ continuous, real-time monitoring of plant emissions beyond the plant perimeter or anywhere in the populated area around the plant.
Despite widespread leakage problems and decades of research into its multiple health impacts, monitoring and reporting of radioactive emissions remain voluntary and the EPA hasn’t seen fit to strengthen drinking water standards for tritium. And unlike our neighbors to the south, the State of New Hampshire continues to reject setting up any independent, off-site, real-time monitoring of radioactive emissions to protect public health and safety. Instead, the state is relying on a for-profit utility to notify the public when an incident threatening to health and safety occurs.
Local residents and scientists are currently raising funds to purchase and install additional independent real-time radiation monitoring stations to monitor radiation from Seabrook Station. While communities in Massachusetts within 10 miles of the Seabrook plant are regularly monitored, thanks to ongoing funding from their state government, there are still gaps in monitoring for many New Hampshire communities downwind of the plant.
Visit Seacoast Radiation Monitoring and The C-10 Foundation to learn more.
GROUNDWATER INFILTRATION & INFRASTRUCTURE DEGRADATION
Groundwater has been seeping into subsurface floors, foundation structures, and control system conduits at Seabrook for decades. This is particularly troublesome since the electrical cables running through these conduits are not waterproof. Water damage can lead to electrical failures, potentially knocking out the crucial cooling systems that keep the reactors from melting down.
Water also appears to be the culprit in the ongoing crumbling of Seabrook’s concrete walls and structures. The integrity of the concrete infrastructure of Seabrook is essential for safety, and this insidious degradation (known as the Alkali-Silica Reaction) is a serious issue. Addressing this kind of damage and determining how to repair foundations at a live nuclear reactor site has never been attempted at a nuclear plant before. It is also not well understood, as no other U.S. nuclear plants have exhibited it, and because it is so difficult to monitor in so many inaccessible locations within the foundations and walls. Water issues at Seabrook will only worsen in coming decades as plant infrastructure continues to degrade and the water table rises and becomes more saline due to accelerated sea level rise.
Learn more about structural degradation issues at Seabrook »
INADEQUATE EVACUATION PLANNING
The current evacuation zone for a disaster at Seabrook is only 10 miles. The failures of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in otherwise safety-conscious Japan should underscore the woeful inadequacy of a 10-mile evacuation planning zone for any nuclear power plant. Couple that with the ongoing absurdity of trying to evacuate Hampton Beach on a hot summer day, not to mention a rapidly growing Seacoast region, using volunteer-driven school buses necessitates a re-examination of this critical response to an increasingly possible accident at Seabrook. SAPL and other groups are calling at the very least for an expansion of the emergency planning zone around Seabrook and all other US nuclear plants.
CLIMATE IMPACT & CARBON FOOTPRINT
Contrary to popular conception, nuclear power generation is NOT carbon-free, especially when looked at in terms of total life-cycle emissions. Recent estimates have nuclear power creating 7 times more carbon emissions than wind power per megawatt-hour, and comparisons with renewable power are even more lopsided when time-to-build for new facilities are considered. Read a full evaluation of nuclear power as a proposed solution to global warming, by Mark Jacobson of Stanford University.
Meanwhile, climate disruption also has a huge impact on the safety of nuclear power. Sea level rise and increasingly violent storm surges threaten to cause further damage to plant foundations, knock out critical offsite power, and affect plant access in coming decades.
Seabrook Station is among the three U.S. nuclear plants most vulnerable to storm surge inundation.
The issues of sea level rise and storm surges have yet to be adequately considered or addressed, even though the Fukushima catastrophe made it very clear that coastal nuclear plants are uniquely fragile—and with catastrophic implications.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission did require U.S. nuclear plants to conduct a lessons learned analysis of likely impacts from storm surges and increased precipitation after Fukushima, but the Trump administration then made those recommendations voluntary. A Stanford University study found that Seabrook is among the three U.S. nuclear plants most vulnerable to storm surge inundation, and Seabrook is at risk of being inundated by storm surges as soon as 2030.
Our Ongoing Role
For over 50 years, SAPL has played an essential and ongoing part in keeping Seabrook Station in check, preventing Seabrook from shrinking the evacuation zone to a harrowing one-mile radius, forcing the plant to end harbor seal deaths caused by their water intake pipes, getting state officials to distribute essential potassium iodide (KI) radiation protection, alerting the public to waste shipment issues and security lapses, and more.
We are here to inform the public of the facts and to keep people apprised of regulatory and legislative issues as they occur. The fact is, we are the people who will suffer the consequences of mismanagement and poor planning, and we are the ones who will pay the cost in the event of an emergency, so it’s up to us to stay informed and take action.