The company that owns the Seabrook Nuclear plant is proposing changes to its emergency response plan. Advocates and lawmakers in New Hampshire and Massachusetts have raised questions about whether it would reduce protections in the case of a nuclear emergency.
NextEra Energy has filed a proposal with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to standardize emergency plans for four nuclear power plants – Seabrook in New Hampshire, Point Beach in Wisconsin, and St. Lucie and Turkey Point in Florida.
The company’s proposal includes 49 changes characterized as potential “reductions in effectiveness.” In the filing, they say they’ve provided “detailed justification” for those, saying the plan “continues to provide an adequate response to radiological emergencies.”
Changes described as potential reductions in effectiveness in the proposal include the company seeking to reduce the number of staff assigned to particular emergency functions, or increase response times for certain emergency response positions from 60 minutes to 90 minutes.
Scott Burnell, a spokesperson for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said “reduction in effectiveness” refers to a proposed change that would be less effective than the company’s current plan. But he noted that regulators would “reject any changes that would fail to effectively protect the public.”
“The NRC requires nuclear power plants to have emergency preparedness procedures that will effectively protect the public if necessary. A plant's existing procedures can exceed that standard, so a "reduction in effectiveness" in that case will continue to effectively protect the public. A "reduction in effectiveness" cannot result in an ineffective plan,” he said.
Bill Orlove, a spokesperson for NextEra, said a reduction in effectiveness “does not imply that the change is degrading emergency preparedness.”
“In fact, most of the changes that are in that list are consistent with current NRC guidelines or industry standards, but we must still characterize them as reductions, compared to the last emergency plan that was approved by NRC,” he said.
Sarah Abramson leads the C-10 Research and Education Foundation, a group that advocates for safety for people who live near Seabrook. She says her group is concerned about the changes – particularly the potential reliance on people working remotely if an emergency were triggered by a storm.
“Weather events have coinciding consequences. They cause widespread power outages. They can affect cellular communication. The more you place reliance on remote wireless communication as your sort of sole singular plan to communicate in an emergency, I think we're walking down a dangerous road of having many single points of failure,” she said.
For Abrahamson, a “reduction in effectiveness,” whether bureaucratic terminology or not, causes concern.
“We want to see Chairman Hanson and the rest of the commission, when they're looking at this type of proposal, or this one specifically, to reject anything that would reduce the effectiveness of an emergency plan. Even one reduction in effectiveness is unacceptable, let alone 49.”
In an email statement to NHPR, Orlove attempted to assuage any doubts about the quality of the plant’s emergency plans.
“The proposed plan does not change the number of full-time employees at Seabrook Station and does not move emergency response roles out of state,” he wrote. “All our on-site personnel would respond, as they would now, to an emergency at Seabrook Station. Understand that we already have a robust emergency response organization and processes at each nuclear facility. This change proposes a hybrid emergency response program that would allow experts at our other locations to provide support, if needed.”
Orlove said the company previously had to fill each emergency role from staff at each nuclear plant, which “meant less flexibility.”
“We need to have depth (“bench strength,” if you will) in all our emergency roles. Currently, some personnel are assigned to roles that the company has determined are not necessary. Eliminating those roles makes additional site personnel available for the roles that are needed,” he said.
A few positions will be considered “remote,” according to Orlove. That means those jobs can be performed by the personnel within the area of the nuclear facility or by personnel from another nuclear facility.
He said the company was proposing extended response times for some positions during emergencies because training and simulations “demonstrates that on-site personnel are fully capable of managing one of our facilities in an emergency for extended periods of time,” and a longer response time would allow employees “greater flexibility” when they’re not working at the plant.
In response to concerns about how remote communications could fail during a weather emergency, he said remote communications take place daily, and has always been part of the emergency plan, given that the current emergency response facility is 10 miles away from the plant.
“All our nuclear facilities, including Seabrook Station, already include remote response roles in emergencies and any increased incorporation of remote responses in the emergency plan does not in any way impair the site’s emergency response preparedness,” he said.
Federal lawmakers from New Hampshire and Massachusetts have written letters to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, asking them to ensure the changes don’t reduce public safety and encouraging them to help the public learn about the plans before deciding whether to approve them.
“We recognize the need for coordinated planning and synchronization among facilities and appreciate efforts to focus on emergency preparedness. However, we have serious questions about the details in the proposed plan related to staffing locally in Seabrook, New Hampshire,” the state’s congressional delegation wrote on Dec. 5.
Lawmakers asked how the plan revisions would improve safety, whether they would reduce the number of full-time employees that hold emergency response roles, and how increasing remote response positions would impact safety.
They also urged the commission to ensure the public has an opportunity to provide comments about the plans.
Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren sent a letter on Dec. 21 urging the commission to reject changes that would decrease safety for people living near nuclear plants.
“We strongly believe that the NRC’s pending decision must prioritize public safety over potential cost savings for the operator,” they wrote.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said they had not set an expected date for their decision.
