Two Massachusetts Democrats urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to hold a public meeting to discuss the degradation of concrete at the Seabrook plant in New Hampshire.

Reps. Ed Markey and John Tierney asked NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko in a letter to convene a meeting near the plant, which is 40 miles north of Boston in Seabrook, N.H.

Inspectors last year discovered that a concrete tunnel related to the cooling system was weakened from water saturation during the past decade (Greenwire, June 8). Two 3-mile-long tunnels are used to carry water to the plant from the Atlantic Ocean.

NextEra Energy Seabrook LLC has said groundwater intrusion is only potentially affecting a small section of the wall in the electrical tunnel that is unrelated to the plant's cooling system. The plant is built to high safety standards and is well above its design safety requirements, the company said.

The safety issue is crucial because NextEra is asking NRC to renew its license, which expires in 2030. The company wants to operate the plant through 2050.

But Markey and Tierney said the public needs to understand Seabrook safety issues, and NRC's plans for a single meeting on April 23 in Rockville, Md., would provide the public with only limited information.

The agency should instead hold public meetings in New Hampshire and Massachusetts and have technical experts available to answer questions, they said. Separately, the commission is holding a meeting on April 26 to review the plant's annual assessment.

Markey and Tierney told Jaczko last year to deny NextEra a license renewal, saying the commission cannot predict what safety issues will surface at the 1970s reactor in the coming decades (Greenwire, June 8, 2011). The lawmakers said it is "grossly premature" for NRC to begin the process for renewing NextEra's license, which is still valid for another two decades.

"If safety structures that are supposed to help cool the Seabrook nuclear power plant are experiencing such alarming degradation during the reactor's 'adolescence,' there is simply no way that the NRC can guarantee that it will remain safe when it enters its 'golden years' almost 40 years from now," they said.

Click here to read the letter.