August, 2006- Hampton, New Hampshire 

Memories of No-Nukes 

During the final days of our summer East Coast journey, my family stayed with my sister-in-law in Hampton, New Hampshire.  This rapidly growing community is one of many things-----a bedroom community/suburb of Boston, and a neighbor of its more famous beachside cousin, Hampton Beach.

Hampton Beach sits on that very small portion of the New Hampshire border that touches the Atlantic Ocean.   It is home to a wide and beautiful beach that echoes Atlantic City in its feel; less the hard edges and underbelly.  In the summer the houses and condos near the ocean are sublet by the owners to vacationing families seeking a Cape Cod beach experience less the high cost. During our trip my wife and I were blessed with the gift of a night alone in Hampton Beach Hotel without our kids. 

The following morning I awoke to a piercing clear and sunny day and decided to take a long run.  It was early and few people were out.  The beach was wide and the ocean water calm and clean. 

A Beast in the Garden of Eden? 

My run started on the beach and then circled back along Ashworth Avenue.  As I stood upon the bridge connecting Ocean Avenue and Ashworth Avenue I peered across Hampton Harbor and the adjacent marshland to see Seabrook Nuclear Power Station.    On this clear and bright day, it was difficult to demonize this power plant, as many had done 25 years ago when New Hampshire Public Service attempted to begin commercial operation.   

During those days I was attending college in Providence, RI and the Seabrook plant was a whipping post for opponents of nuclear power.  Student pilgrimages to Seabrook to protest perceived risks were a regular event for many of my classmates.  The negative press was highly effective in casting Seabrook as a dark and dangerous dungeon foisted upon the local community. The Seabrook plant (as did many in its peer group) had the misfortune of commencing operations at the time of the Three Mile Island accident. 

Opposing Seabrook-Hit Them Where They’re Exposed 

The opposition strategy around Seabrook was unique and it has never been clear to me how or why it evolved as it did.  Perhaps as with other NIMBY attacks, the opponents latched onto those legal objections which resonated most loudly.  The Seabrook opposition strategy was interesting for what it was not.  The heart of the argument against Seabrook was not that nuclear power technology was flawed, nor was Seabrook’s specific design criticized as being intrinsically dangerous.  Opponents did not focus on endangered species to be threatened, nor did they express enormous concern about disruption of the biosphere in the bay, or complain about visual blight.   

Instead, opponents attempted to kill the Seabrook plant by objecting to the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed emergency evacuation plan.  As part of any nuclear power plant being licensed to operate by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), an emergency evacuation plan must be developed to specifically address the timely and safe evacuation of nearby residents should a “triggering event” (e.g. an actual or potential radioactive release) occur. 

The opposition strategy was ingenious because it revolved around fairly unchangeable factors:  unique local geography isolating the spit of Hampton Beach, inferior local road infrastructure, and an immovable power plant.  Certainly, the original choice for the site was suspect, yet this location had received NRC approval years before. In 1983 I graduated from college and heard or read little about Seabrook thereafter.  I do know that it was operating during my 2006 summer visit, but did not know what journey that it had taken to placate concerns regarding emergency evacuation.  
 

I finished my walk across the bridge.  Other bikers and runners seemed oblivious to the nearby Beast that Seabrook had once been.  

The Nuclear Power Industry-American Style 

As a person who has spent my career working in environmental and energy firms, I’ve often been asked my opinion about the soundness and safety of nuclear energy. As with many if not most energy and environmental issues, politics and public perception trump the “does it work and “is it safe” question. 

The magnitude of the safety risk posed by a catastrophic accident at a nuclear power plant is large.  Put another way, if an underlying nuclear reaction spins out of control the potential for dangerous radioactive release is high.  The reality, however, is that this type of catastrophic reaction has never occurred at any commercial nuclear power plant in the United States[1].  The Chernobyl nuclear accident in the former Soviet Union remains the most deadly and harmful catastrophic event to occur at a commercial nuclear power plant. 

The design of commercial power plants employs control rods and cooling water specifically designed to keep fission reactions at safe, but energy producing levels.    At a nuclear power plant, the worst case scenario is scary, but the probability of the worst case scenario being realized is minimal. Major and deadly refinery explosions occur annually and are even incorporated into energy planning, emergency planning, and business planning by oil and gas industry managers. Coal power plant emissions are estimated to contribute to tens of thousands of death each year and hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks in the U.S. alone!  World statistics, although less easy to verify are even more staggering--------particularly in developing countries.  Nevertheless, nuclear power carries with it the potential (albeit small) to kill or hurt large numbers of innocent people.  In the minds and hearts of most Americans, nuclear power is a far worse actor than fossil fuel power plants and liquid fuel processing facilities. 

The nuclear industry’s image is also heavily damaged by the industry’s inability to establish acceptable and safe disposal of spent fuel rods.  Most commercial plants currently store spent nuclear fuel rods on site, awaiting resolution of a tortuously long political battle to locate a remote and centralized commercial nuclear waste storage facility.

….And you thought Commercial Nuclear Waste was Bad 

The dirty little secret about the “no place for the nuclear waste argument” is that the threat associated with the all of this country’s commercial nuclear waste is very small compared with the threat presented by nuclear waste created from current and former DOE nuclear weapons fabrication facilities, prototype nuclear enrichment facilities, and former  test breeder reactor facilities.  The high toxicity of the waste at these DOE facilities, the multi-generational time frame required to isolate and safely treat this waste, and the staggering cost of clean-up is, to a large degree, classified and therefore below the radar screen of most Americans. 

A RESURGENCE OF NUCLEAR POWER IN THE U.S.? 

With global warming emerging as one of the world’s largest environmental threats, and with fossil fuel prices holding firm at high levels, energy developers are at least dipping their toes in the water with respect to potential new nuclear power plants.  Caution is in order. The perceived risk of a catastrophic accident at a nuclear plant and the legacy of Three Mile Island created regulatory requirements that resulted in diseconomies of scale for nuclear power plants. 

I have visited a number of nuclear power plants throughout the U.S., including Three Mile Island.  I have been struck by the complexity, redundancy and interrelatedness of the functional operating systems.  A nuclear power plant is like a circular mathematical equation:  when one variable changes, the whole equation changes.  Unfortunately, while a circular mathematical equation comes to a steady state, an electrical failure in a nuclear plant requires time consuming and costly modifications to the problem system, the redundant system, and the interconnected system. 

The U.S. nuclear power industry’s only salvation may be in dramatically reducing a nuclear plant’s minimum optimal scale. Although this might help mitigate diseconomies of scale effect, it is not likely to erase the public’s fear of catastrophic nuclear accidents.  

I don’t anticipate a dramatic resurrection of nuclear power in this country in my lifetime.  The cost of mitigating perceived risk will remain too great to allow nuclear technology to rise again.  The die was cast by Three Mile Island and the damage to the American public’s psyche remains too great. 

I finished my run and took one final look at the Seabrook Plant.  I peered across the narrow two-lane road that served Hampton Beach and wondered how the evacuation plan had finally been approved.  On that bright and gorgeous August morning, it surely seemed to me that the road was not adequate to allow thousands of tourists to leave the area safely and quickly. 

An Epilogue to Postcards I and Postcards II will be posted to www.greencoast.org in September 2007