A public safety watchdog group in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, Citizens within the Ten-Mile Radius Research and Education Foundation (C-10), is publicly exposing that for more than seven years, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has known that concrete structures are deteriorating at the Seabrook nuclear power station on the New Hampshire seacoast and done nothing about it. To date, the federal agency responsible for the public safety of millions of people within the nuke’s emergency planning zone spanning from Maine to Massachusetts, has not required NextEra, the operator, to do any certified testing of the nuclear power plant’s concrete structures. These concrete structures include the reactor’s containment dome and the spent fuel storage pool loaded with hundreds of tons of nuclear waste. What’s more absurd, the NRC is considering giving Seabrook a 20-year operating license extension from 2030 to 2050 in September 2016.
The NRC knows that the nuclear power plant’s structures are under active attack by an expansive chemical reaction known as Alkali-Silica Reaction (ASR) that is progressively weakening the reactor by micro-fracturing of concrete increasingly saturated with groundwater intrusion. There is “no known remedy” for ASR. Surface visual inspections are worthless for determining the depth, breadth and progress of attack. It is impossible to predict how long before the chemical attack makes the concretes structural engineering incompetent to earthquake, accident or structural collapse.
Seabrook’s control building was the first structure confirmed to have moderate to severe deterioration from test results taken from onsite concrete core samples extracted in 2010. After discovering structural deterioration, NextEra stopped taking any further core extraction samples from onsite structures vital to the reactor’s defense-in-depth protection from a potentially catastrophic radiological accident no more than 35 miles from Boston. Instead, the power company with the NRC’s permission decided to test a “replica” built in Ferguson, Texas made of different and dissimilar concrete materials from New Mexico and call the results a legitimate scientific analysis. C-10 is saying “no” to a sham process obviously bent on rigging the results to continued operations and license extension. Core extraction sampling of Seabrook’s concrete is an inexpensive test that would produce a reliable comparison of the remaining mechanical qualities of affected concrete from unaffected concrete areas of the nuclear power plant.
To date, the NRC Is describing Seabrook’s condition as “operable but degraded.”
C-10 is relentless in pressing the agency to require NextEra to analyze actual concrete core extractions taken from Seabrook’s containment and spent fuel pool.
Why is NRC going to such great lengths to hide Seabrook from real science?