Bill could delay Seabrook nuclear plant relicensing

SEABROOK — The approval of a 20-year extension of the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant's operating license could be delayed until 2020 if a bill proposed by two Democratic federal legislators from Massachusetts is approved by Congress.

HR 6554 filed by Reps. Edward Markey and John Tierney would prohibit the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission from granting a license extension to any current nuclear plant licensee that applies for it more than 10 years prior to the expiration of its current license. Seabrook Station has already petitioned the NRC for a 20-year extension of its operating license, which will not expire until 2030.

“Allowing the NRC to give a 60-year-long clean bill of health to reactors that are in their nuclear adolescence, especially one with documented safety issues such as Seabrook, is like allowing a doctor to assure a 20-year-old smoker they will never get lung cancer,” Markey wrote in a joint press release issued with Tierney dated Sept. 26, explaining the reason for filing the bill. “This legislation will help ensure that the effects of aging on America's nuclear power plants are more well-known before granting any license extensions, so nearby residents can have some confidence that the reactors' 'golden years' won't involve catastrophic aging-related safety failures.”

Doug Bogen, executive director of the Exeter-based Seacoast Anti-Pollution League, a local nuclear watchdog group, said this kind of legislation has been a long time coming.

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NextEra cuts N.H. Seabrook output due to solar activity

July 16 (Reuters) - NextEra Energy Inc said it expects to be able to increase power at the 1,247-megawatt Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire after reducing output Sunday night due to solar magnetic activity, a plant spokesman said Monday.

"The conditions that caused the power reduction Sunday night have gone away," said David Barr, a spokesman for the plant, noting this was the first time plant operators reduced the Seabrook reactor because of solar activity.

He could not say, due to competitive reasons, when the plant would return back to 85 percent, where it was operating before the power reduction.

Plant operators reduced the plant from 85 percent power Sunday morning to 68 percent Monday morning.
The reduced output at Seabrook came at a time when the power grid was already stressed as homes and businesses across the U.S. Northeast and Midwest crank up their air conditioners to escape another brutal heat wave.

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New Hampshire: Nuclear plant faces questions from NRC

SEABROOK — The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is asking Seabrook Station for more information regarding long-term operability concerns raised in an inspection completed early this year.

Seabrook Station, which is seeking a 20-year extension of its operating license slated to expire in 2030, received a letter this week asking it to respond to concerns raised at an April 23 meeting at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Md.

NextEra Energy, which owns the plant, received a letter from Christopher G. Miller, director of nuclear reactor safety with the NRC. Miller said the recent inspection focused on NextEra's work regarding alkali-silica reactions that are affecting concrete structures.

Alkali-silica reaction refers to the impact of groundwater on concrete. The NRC first raised the issue of deterioration of the concrete in below-ground-level structures at Seabrook in a May 2011 report. Inspectors at that time discovered potentially problematic conditions, including a large amount of groundwater infiltration and calcium carbonate deposits, corroded steel supports, base plates and piping, corroded anchor bolts, pooling of water, and cracking and spalling of concrete.

In his letter this week, Miller wrote, "inspectors concluded that these structures can currently perform their safety-related functions despite the observed degradation ... however, the NRC still has concerns associated with long-term operability."

Miller has asked NextEra to provide information at the April meeting including how various characteristics of the concrete may be affected by alkali-silica reaction and the related effects on other elements of the structures, such as rebar.

Alan Griffith, a spokesman for NextEra, said the company is confident that plant operators can manage the concrete degradation issue.

"We're pleased that, once again, the NRC has made clear that it has no immediate safety concerns at Seabrook Station," he said Tuesday. "We have a comprehensive strategy in place to effectively manage (alkali-silica reaction) that includes augmented monitoring, improved analysis techniques and potential ASR mitigation actions if ever needed.

"Most importantly, ASR has not and will not impact our ability to operate our plant safely."

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New Hampshire: Seabrook Nuclear Power plant progresses Objections to license renewal rejected

By Shir Haberman

business@seacoastonline.com

March 13, 2012 2:00 AM

SEABROOK — The road to extending the operating license for the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant until 2050 just got a little easier.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced March 8 that it has tossed out three contentions to that extension filed by nuclear safety groups that had previously been accepted for adjudication by the commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.

"This rejection of our intervener status is a complete outrage," said Doug Bogen, executive director of the Exeter-based Seacoast Anti-Pollution League, one of the organizations that had filed a contention against the license extension that the NRC rejected. "The NRC's action is all the more heinous in that it comes just a few days before the anniversary of the Fukushima disaster — an event which should have shaken the foundations of nuclear regulation, but appears to have caused barely a tremor."

SAPL's contention, filed along with the Washington, D.C.-based organization Beyond Nuclear and the New Hampshire Sierra Club, was that the Environmental Report used to justify the license extension filed by NextEra Energy, the operators of the Seabrook plant, failed to evaluate the potential for renewable energy to offset the loss of energy production from the Seabrook nuclear power plant when its current license expires in 2030. The nuclear safety groups argued that new energy technologies in the works would make the power generated by Seabrook Station unnecessary.

The NRC overruled its licensing board's decision that this contention had merit. In doing so, the commission effectively removed these three organizations from the license renewal process.

"As we have discussed, in assessing energy-alternatives contentions, practicality requires us to consider chiefly, often exclusively, alternatives that can be shown to have viability today or in the near future," the NRC wrote in its March 8 order. "Here, Beyond Nuclear (SAPL and the Sierra Club have) not provided support for (the) claim that offshore wind is technically feasible and commercially viable — either today or in the near future — and, therefore, has not submitted an admissible contention."

The NRC decision angered SAPL President Herb Moyer, who claimed the ruling violated federal law.

"One moniker for the NRC is 'Nobody Really Cares;' another is 'No Real Consideration,'" Moyer said. "(The commission's) decision to discard SAPL's legal contention that a license extension requires consideration of future power alternatives is illogical, irrational and contrary to the law embodied in the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969."

NRC Public Affairs Officer Neil Sheehan said that while he would not call the commission's decision to override its own licensing board unusual, "in general, the commission tends to support decisions reached by ASLB unless there are compelling reasons to do otherwise, recognizing that the ASLB heard all of the testimony and carefully scrutinized all of the relevant information."

The decision to toss out the SAPL contention, along with two others filed jointly by the Maine-based Friends of the Coast and the New England Coalition in Massachusetts, leaves only two left for final judgment by the licensing board. Both were filed by the Coalition and Friends groups.

The first claims that the Severe Accident Mitigation Alternatives report submitted by NextEra as part of its license extension request minimized the potential amount of radiation that could be released by the Seabrook plant in a severe accident. While the commission was obviously displeased that the ASLB accepted this contention, adjudication of this issue was allowed to go forward.

"Although we consider, as we said previously, that support for this contention is weak, because the (licensing) board is the appropriate arbiter of such fact-specific questions of contention admissibility, we will not second-guess the board's evaluation of factual support for the contention, absent an error of law or abuse of discretion," the NRC wrote.

The last contention allowed had to do with the claim that NextEra used a faulty modeling process to determine how air currents along the coast would disperse any radioactivity released from the Seabrook plant in the event of a severe accident.

"Here, the board held that (the) Friends/NEC have raised plausible limitations of air dispersion modeling at the (Seabrook) site, and that the asserted limitations of the atmospheric dispersion model plausibly could affect the SAMA cost-benefit conclusions," the commission wrote in the March 8 order. "Given the substantial deference we typically accord licensing boards on contention admissibility, we conclude that the board did not abuse its discretion or commit legal error in finding adequate factual support for the contention."

No date has yet been set for a hearing on these two remaining contentions.

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