The Seabrook nuclear power plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire is scheduled to start operating early in 1990. For the public, this opening raises issues of safety and concern for the environment, yet to the Seabrook plant owners there seems to be no moral issues at stake, only a need for a source of energy that will let us continue our use of electricity. Another plant, Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth, Massachusetts, (80 miles from Seabrook), started full operation late September. It is the only plant in the country to have failed almost every test before opening, except for the last, of course allowing it to open.

The Seabrook plant is a different kind of plant with a different design and structure, but some workers believe that not enough care was given to building the plant. This presents a potential risk of a meltdown which could put excess radiation into the air, contaminating the land and the people on it. There is a proposed evacuation plan which would remove the citizens within a ten mile radius. Some are not convinced that the radiation won't spread beyond this ten mile radius of the plant. Some citizens are concerned with technical problems with the plan, such as what would happen if a meltdown occurred in the summer when the beaches and roads around Seabrook are full of tourists and summer beachgoers.

Another problem, which may be the most important concern, is that of the nuclear waste. This waste is radioactive and currently there is no place to store it permanently. It has been stored "temporarily" either at the individual plants or underground at locations dispersed around the country. There was a proposal to send the waste into outer space, but it was felt that we shouldn't corrode other environments with the waste. The waste that we produce now will be buried and left for our children (and their children).

There are alternative sources of energy which are environmentally safe and effective: the solar heating and solar electricity form photovoltaics, wind, solar-generated hydrogen fuels biofuels and small scale hydro power. These sources are technologically available now. These can be produced in our country without dependency on other countries.

We also need to make an effort towards conservation and recycling which are cheap energy sources and have been proved to have the energy capacity to support us for the next two decades, by which time solar and hydro energies will be fully developed and as efficient as nuclear power.

We must think about our future. I believe that Seabrook should be stopped and we should take a closer look at all of the safer and equally efficient energy sources. n