Decades before New Hampshire lawmakers began debating the future of nuclear energy, David Wright was 9 years old, following his father through protest lines near the Seabrook Station construction site. The plant sat just across the marsh from their family home. Today, Wright holds what he calls mixed feelings, and residents like him across the Seacoast region are now finding their lived experience newly relevant to state policy.
Seabrook Station came online in 1990, after years of delays and cost overruns that made it one of the most contentious infrastructure projects in New England history. The opposition was not subtle. On May 1, 1977, more than 1,400 protesters were detained during a mass act of civil disobedience, one of the largest mass arrests in American history at the time, according to Rolling Stone. Wright and his father were not among them, but the moment shaped how many in the area viewed the plant for years to come.
Now, 36 years after Seabrook began feeding 1,244 megawatts into New England’s grid, the political mood around nuclear energy has shifted. In her State of the State address this February, Gov. Kelly Ayotte directed state officials to map a path toward adopting advanced nuclear resources, possibly including small modular reactors. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has pursued similar efforts, and both the Biden and Trump administrations championed the nuclear industry before and after the 2024 election cycle.
For residents of the Seacoast region, this policy conversation is not abstract. They have lived next to a reactor for more than three decades, and some are watching the renewed push with cautious, complicated eyes.
Marie Souther, a lifelong resident of Seabrook’s River Street, did not mince words. “Everyone who dies on this street dies of cancer,” she said. River Street is a small road off Ocean Boulevard, a cluster of houses and cottages along the Blackwater River, with Seabrook Station visible to the west across the marsh. Souther remembers the river before the plant came online, when the water ran clearer and the marsh felt less hemmed in by development.
Her concern reflects a worry that public health data has not fully addressed. Residents near Seabrook have raised questions about cancer rates for years, though the connection to the plant remains scientifically disputed. That uncertainty is itself part of the problem for many neighbors. They want answers, not reassurances.
Transparency is another pressure point. Local officials and residents say the community has not always felt like a genuine partner in decisions about emergency planning or plant operations. For some, the memory of being handed evacuation plans after construction was already underway still stings. They argue that any future nuclear development in New Hampshire or Massachusetts should build community trust from the start, not treat it as an afterthought.
Wright himself has not written off nuclear energy entirely. He said he might support new development if it came with direct benefits to host communities and stronger safety planning. That conditional openness captures a sentiment common among Seabrook’s neighbors: the technology is familiar enough that fear alone does not drive the conversation, but familiarity has also taught them what can go wrong when accountability is weak.
Small modular reactors, the technology Ayotte and others are pushing, are not yet commercially deployed at scale in the United States. Proponents argue they offer a safer and more flexible alternative to traditional large-scale plants. Critics point out that the same promises of clean, cheap, and safe energy were made about Seabrook before construction costs ballooned and protests turned into mass arrests.
The residents of the Seacoast region are not opposed to being part of that conversation. But they are asking policymakers to treat their decades of experience as something more than local color. Their concerns about health impacts, emergency planning, and corporate accountability are not relics of 1970s activism. They are the product of living with a reactor across the marsh for a generation, and they deserve serious answers before New England commits to building the next one.
