"No danger" after fire on Seabrook, NH nuclear power plant property, police say
Police say there is "no danger to the public" after a transformer fire on the Seabrook, New Hampshire nuclear power plant property Friday afternoon.
The police and fire department responded to NextEra Seabrook Station just after 2 p.m. for a report of a transformer fire near an employee parking lot. Police said that while they were on the scene, an adjacent transformer also failed.
"There were no casualties, no danger to the public, and no interference with the operations of the plant," police said.
It's believed that both failures were due to the extreme heat wave, police said. Temperatures were in the upper 90s in Seabrook at the time.
A NextEra spokesperson said that the fire happened at a substation on the property that is physically separate from the nuclear facility. They said the cause of the fire is under investigation.
"We are aware that a fire occurred earlier today at a substation on our property - not related to the nuclear plant. The Town of Seabrook Fire Department responded, and the fire has been extinguished," NextEra said in a statement. "There were no injuries, no evacuations, and the nuclear facility was not impacted."
The plant that has operated since 1990 is 40 miles north of Boston, just across the Massachusetts border, and 10 miles south of Portsmouth. It is one of two nuclear power plants currently operating in New England - the other is in Connecticut.
According to NextEra, Seabrook provides enough energy for 1.4 million homes and businesses.
In 2022, the power station inadvertently sounded an emergency beach evacuation alarm, causing confusion in neighboring communities. Investigators blamed human error for the mistake, and NextEra expressed "regret" over the incident.
