In the late 1970s, when Seabrook resident David Wright was about 9 years old, his father began bringing him along to protest the construction of a nuclear power plant across the marsh from their family home.
Some locals were fired up. “They didn’t want a reactor in their backyard,” Wright said.
Thousands who shared that sentiment turned out in the Seabrook area for a series of acts of civil disobedience during the plant’s construction, culminating in the May 1, 1977, detention of more than 1,400 protestors. At the time, Rolling Stone reported, the event ranked among the largest mass-arrests in American history. (Wright said he and his father were not in attendance that day.)
Nevertheless, in 1990, after a series of delays and cost overruns, Seabrook Station came online. Within a 180-foot-tall and more than 3-foot-thick concrete dome, it has contributed 1,244 megawatts of power to New England’s grid for 36 years.
Nuclear energy, on the decline in the United States as plants built in the 20th century begin to close, is now the subject of renewed focus for politicians who paint it as a clean and reliable source of energy.
In her State of the State address in February, New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte directed state officials to chart a path for the state to adopt more advanced nuclear resources, possibly through adoption of emerging technology like small modular reactors.
Nearby, Mass. Gov. Maura Healey has taken similar steps, and both the Biden and Trump administrations have championed the nuclear industry.
Coexisting with nuclear power
In the Seacoast region, where residents have coexisted with a nuclear power plant for decades, the technology feels familiar. Neighbors of Seabrook Station and local officials said they understand the draw of nuclear power.
But some also voiced concerns about the industry and its effects, including fears about potential health impacts, transparency, and emergency planning at Seabrook — and they want those concerns addressed before New England takes further steps toward a nuclear future.
“Everyone who dies on this street dies of cancer,” said Marie Souther, a lifelong resident of Seabrook’s River Street. With a few dozen houses and cottages clustered on either side, the road juts off Ocean Boulevard into the tidal Blackwater River.
Just to the west, across the marsh, is Seabrook Station, though Souther remembers a time before it came online — and before much of the development that now crowds the marsh. The river, clearer then, was home to starfish and sea urchins. It has lost much of its biodiversity over the years, Souther said.
As time has passed, she has also lost several of her neighbors to cancer. Souther tallied the total of River Street residents she knows who have been diagnosed with different forms of the disease at a dozen or more. That includes Souther and a member of her immediate family, both of whom have survived colon cancer.
Cancer is “big” and complicated, Souther acknowledged. She doesn’t know if the plant is a contributing factor in her neighbors’ diagnoses. But its presence, she said, weighs on the minds of those who have fallen ill.
“I’ve known a lot of people that have had cancer on this road,” said Wright, who lives a few houses down. “I don’t know if it’s got anything to do with the plant, it probably doesn’t, but they do release a certain amount of steam. … They claim it’s a safe level of radiation. Well, you talk to most scientists, and there ain’t no such thing as a safe level of radiation.”
More community involvement
Judy Chagnon, another neighbor of the power plant, said she felt out of the loop about the facility’s operations, as well as the procedures in place to monitor it. There is a radiation monitoring probe mounted on a telephone pole in her neighborhood, she said, but she doesn’t know how to access the data it yields.
Chagnon said she wanted more community involvement in discussions about any future nuclear power plants in New Hampshire.
“I just don’t want them to ruin the environment. They should be having town meetings,” she said.
At the state level, New Hampshire has not invested in radiation safety monitoring to the same level as Massachusetts, according to Sarah Abramson, executive director of the nonprofit radiation monitoring organization C-10.
Abramson said C-10’s radiation monitoring probes in the Bay State, which provide real time alerts when radiation levels rise, receive funding from the Massachusetts Department of Health. That same technology on the New Hampshire side of the border, meanwhile, does not receive funding from the state, Abramson said.
As a result, the New Hampshire monitoring effort is funded by donations and grants, a situation that Abramson described as “precarious.”
Insufficient monitoring?
Other monitoring in New Hampshire includes that conducted by NextEra Energy, the Florida company that operates Seabrook Station. Meanwhile, the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services also conducts radiation monitoring at some locations throughout the state, said spokesperson Jake Leon.
The department relies on real-time data from two probes operated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Concord and Portsmouth; their other measurements are collected with static probes that collect radiation over a three-month period, yielding a quarterly average exposure rate.
To Abramson, that kind of monitoring isn’t sufficient: It can’t identify a temporary harmful spike as it happens, she said.
Carleigh Beriont, vice chair of the Hampton Select Board and a congressional candidate, says local emergency preparations seem to be diminishing. Minutes from a Jan. 27 meeting of the Hampton Select Board detail an announcement from Town Manager Jamie Sullivan that the town’s first responders would not be participating in that year’s radiation emergency response training, usually an annual occurrence, because the state was not providing funding for the exercise as it had previously.
“I just see this lack of willingness to invest in what is supposed to be a necessary training at the same time as we’re saying, ‘Oh, we’re going to build new nuclear power plants,’ to be really discordant,” Beriont said. She said she wanted safety protocols to be bolstered at Seabrook Station, which has struggled with concrete degradation, before new plants were considered.
Wright also shared concerns about safety protocol, including doubts about existing evacuation plans and a desire for a no-fly zone over the power plant.
Jury out on smaller plants
Regarding the plants themselves, proponents of small modular reactors say they would be safer than existing power plants due to their smaller size, automated safety features, and modern design. But for Abramson, the jury is still out.
“We haven’t seen one yet,” she said. Until test reactors currently under construction elsewhere in the U.S. have gone through robust testing, she said, the safety and feasibility of small modular reactors would remain unproven.
William Manzi, Seabrook’s town manager, has a unique to-do list connected to his town’s role as nuclear power plant host. That includes emergency trainings and maintaining evacuation routes. But to Manzi, the jobs, tax benefits, and energy outweigh any cons of nuclear energy.
“Because it’s been here for so long, I would say that it’s woven into the fabric, so to speak,” he said of Seabrook Station.
Good source of tax money
Taxes paid by NextEra are about 25% to 30% of Seabrook’s total tax levy, he added, something that he sees as a direct benefit to residents. He added that he would be interested in seeing Seabrook host a future nuclear installation.
Indeed, if New Hampshire sees more nuclear development, there is a chance it would occur at Seabrook, where infrastructure is already in place and residents are used to the idea, Abramson said. But placing two reactors next to one another would create a novel set of challenges that she said haven’t yet been fully evaluated.
If more nuclear comes to town, Wright said, he’d need to see more direct benefits to residents, such as a proven impact on energy costs, for him to be supportive.
“I’ve lived here all my life, and we’ve never had an accident or a real emergency,” he said. “It’s just kind of on your mind.”