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. It has operated since 1990. 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.
Two reactors were planned at Seabrook but the first unit did not begin full operation until 1990, a full 14 years after the construction permit was granted, and the second unit was never built due to construction delays caused by protests, cost overruns, and troubles obtaining financing. The difficulties led to the bankruptcy of Seabrook's utility owner, PSNH. Since 2002, Seabrook Station has been owned and operated by NextEra Energy Resources.
History
Seabrook Station construction The Public Service Company of New Hampshire (PSNH) initially sought plans for building a nuclear power plant in 1966. PSNH initially planned for building the plant in Newington, but the construction permit was denied after concerns of the proposed site being too close to Pease Air Force Base. After the new location of Seabrook was selected, construction plans were finalized in 1972. PSNH originally proposed the first unit coming online by 1979, the second unit coming online by 1981, and a total cost of less than $1 billion.
PSNH and the state Public Utilities Commission expected little opposition in constructing Seabrook Station, and even the Union Leader reported, "Management of Public Service does not anticipate difficulties in obtaining the necessary licenses and permits for the Seabrook site because it is not near an air base [as was Newington, its first choice for a site], and condenser cooling water can be discharged directly to deep water in the Atlantic Ocean." When the construction and operation plans were presented to the town of Seabrook, the plans "were met with an enthusiastic response" and were unanimously approved.
Construction began in August 1976 with cooperation amongst sixteen utility groups. However, numerous problems led to construction delays. In the fall of 1976, the New England regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency rejected the cooling tunnel discharge system, which would have disallowed operation of the plant, but the decision was appealed and later overturned in 1978. For several years during construction there were many protests and acts of civil disobedience, the largest of which was in 1977 and had over 1,400 arrests. The Three Mile Island accident in 1979 diminished outside interest in financing and buying ownership of Seabrook Station. Six surrounding New Hampshire towns within the 10-mile emergency planning radius of Seabrook Station including Hampton refused to provide evacuation planning, and in 1980, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was petitioned to halt construction until those evacuation plans were resolved. The six Massachusetts towns within the 10-mile radius were also opposed to Seabrook Station, which resulted in political opposition, such as from Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, and numerous legal suits during construction.
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 PSNH. 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 NRC 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."quoted by US EPA Commissioner Kennedy, in [Decisions of the United States Environmental Protection Agency], v.1 p.490.
NextEra Energy and recent history 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 (a subsidiary of FPL Group), 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 (a regulated utility), 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 2009, the name of the nuclear power plant was officially changed to NextEra Energy Seabrook, but the plant is still widely known and referred to as Seabrook Station.
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. In 2019, the New Hampshire House of Representatives introduced House Bill 1661 that would have removed Seabrook Station's property tax exemption for components used to mitigate air and water pollution. In 2020, House Bill 1661 failed to proceed out of the NH House of Representatives.
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.
Beginning in the early 2020s, NextEra Energy has been involved in an ongoing dispute with utility company Avangrid over the New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) power line being constructed in Maine, which is aimed at bringing hydropower from Canada to the New England power grid. Before being interconnected to the New England electric grid, the additional power delivery would require upgrades to Seabrook Station's main generator breaker, which is being litigated over the cost of the upgrade and which party or parties would be responsible for those costs. In February 2023, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered NextEra Energy Resources to proceed with upgrades to the main generator breaker, which is expected to occur during the fall 2024 refueling outage.
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 (NRC) 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 (ASR) because of ground-water infiltration into various structure foundations, which prompted concerns from various local politicians. In June 2017, NRC officials "reviewed numerous documents and inspected the plant as it gauge[d] 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 NRC 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. In August 2020, the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) formally accepted Seabrook Station's concrete monitoring program for ASR concerns. However, additional monitoring conditions were imposed by the Board in the plant's license, citing that they are "necessary to provide adequate protection of public health and safety".
In May 2021, U.S Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, both from Massachusetts, sent a letter to the NRC expressing concerns with the ASLB's decision and that the NRC should "reopen the record for consideration of supplemental testimony and strengthen the four license conditions in the ASLB’s Initial Decision."
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.Staff Writer (November 2013). "Economic Impact of NextEra Energy's Seabrook Station". Nuclear Energy Institute. Retrieved February 3, 2018. Seabrook Station directly employs 650 people that earn, on average, more than double the average salary of workers in Rockingham County and Strafford County Seabrook Station generates approximately 40 percent of New Hampshire's total electricity, and its emission-free operation helps avoid the emission of nearly 4 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, which is the equivalent of taking almost 700,000 cars off the road Seabrook Station contributes $535 million of economic activity locally and contributes $1.4 billion to the U.S. economy each year, and for every dollar of output from Seabrook Station, the local economy produced $1.34 Seabrook Station's financial contributions to local environmental groups over the previous decade amounted to more than $1 million
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. According to 2011 projections, if a gas-fired power plant had been built instead of Seabrook Station, then "it would have emitted nearly 94 million metric tons of CO2 over 22 years – nearly equal to all of Arizona's CO2 emissions for the whole of 2009". As of 2020, municipal electric utilities in Massachusetts only produced 2.43% of their energy from wind and solar energy, but because of contracts held with Seabrook Nuclear Station and Millstone Nuclear Power Plant in Connecticut, the share of non-emitting energy produced by Massachusetts municipal electric utilities jumps to 38.22%.