NRC will look the other way on Seabrook cracks (and wind energy potential and....)

In its determination to give the Seabrook nuclear plant in New Hampshire a 20-year license extension 20 years before the current operating license expires, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided to overlook the cracking in safety-related concrete structures at the plant. The cracks are dismissed as airily as the fact that offshore wind power, 20 years from now, could power all of New England's electricity needs, making Seabrook (and other area nuclear and fossil plants) redundant. But the NRC never met a license application it didn't like. Maine-based Friends of the Coast and the New England Coalition in Vermont had asked for the concrete cracking to be taken into consideration as a formal part of the licensing proceedings. Instead of viewing the merits of the argument, the NRC threw it out based on a technicality related to timeliness, hardly an indication of putting public safety first.