SEABROOK — Al Griffith, a spokesman for Seabrook Station, was pleased to hear of presidential candidate Sen. John McCain's support of nuclear power during an interview in New Hampshire yesterday.
But the idea reviving the nuclear power plant's second reactor, an option McCain said yesterday he would like to know more about, is not currently being looked at by the plant's parent company, Florida Power and Light Energy.
"We get asked the question frequently," Griffith said yesterday afternoon. "And we have no plans to rebuild unit 2."
In an interview with the Manchester Union-Leader before a campaign stop in Rochester, N.H., yesterday, McCain said that Seabrook Station's second reactor might fit with his proposal to add 45 nuclear power plants over the next two decades.
While he admitted not having studied Seabrook, McCain said there may be reason to look into whether the long-shuttered second reactor could be revived.
"I've been told, and I'm not an expert on it, but I've been told that that may have some viability," McCain said in a Union-Leader story posted online yesterday. "But I'd like to look at it some more."
McCain was on a campaign swing through the Granite State yesterday, which included a Town Hall meeting in Rochester, about 30 miles north of Seabrook. According to the Union-Leader report, McCain said he would make the United States more energy independent through conservation and renewable energy sources, while also pushing for more oil drilling and nuclear power.
He said in the report he didn't have enough information "to know exactly what that viability is" for Seabrook. But in advocating for nuclear power, he also noted that it only takes five years to build a nuclear plant in France. "Why should it take 10 or more years in the United States of America," he told the Manchester newspaper. McCain said that adding 45 nuclear power plants by 2030 "will create 700,000 jobs."
A phone message from The Daily News to McCain's regional press representative in New Hampshire late yesterday afternoon was not returned.
Seabrook Station was first proposed in 1972 to have two reactors. But the station sparked one of the largest anti-nuclear movements in American history. It culminated in one of the most well-known nonviolent protests in American history on April 30, 1977, when 1,414 people were arrested for trespassing at the site. The National Guard and police from around New England were called in to assist.
By 1990, when the plant was finally able to get its commercial license, it had been scaled back to one reactor.
Griffith said when construction on the second reactor stopped, it was only about one-third completed, and as such "it sat there a long time." The station's majority owner, Florida Power and Light Energy, required the unit be dismantled in 2002, Griffith said, and it was converted into storage space.
Griffith said he did not know what kind of technical and engineering requirements the site would need to go online, but that FPL had no current plans to revive the reactor.
Griffith did say he appreciated McCain's proposals to increase nuclear power in America, and his remark about Seabrook Station was not unappreciated.
"It was a pleasant surprise," Griffith said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
