Word on Seabrook at the Soda Store: The Fight’s Not Over Yet

People gathered Friday at Fowle’s Soda and Cigar could say this much about their two decades of opposition to the Seabrook nuclear power plant: Popular sentiment doesn’t always win, but it dies hard.

“It’s frustrating to fight the odds, but we think of the children and then keep on,” said David MacWhinnie, a longtime resident who stopped off at the store Friday to reminisce about past battles over the plant 6 miles up the coast and wonder what the future holds.

Over the years, a vocal core of citizens in about a half-dozen cities clustered around the New Hampshire border have signed petitions, held bake sales and marched against the plant.

But despite their protests, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved licensing for the reactor.

The federal panel’s long-awaited decision Thursday came as no surprise to residents here.

“The government wants to do it, so we have to put up with it,” Everett Bridges, 87, said.

For others, the fight continues. Opponents, including officials of the state of Massachusetts, have pledged to appeal the decision in the courts.

Jane Wickers, one of a few dozen regulars at Fowle’s, a fixture here since 1940, said: “You start to feel like you can’t make any difference . . . but you’ve got to try.”

People around here say they don’t regard themselves as the protesting kind. They live quietly in old coastal towns where boarded up ice cream stands are part of the off-season charm.

But many citizens have joined the Clamshell Alliance and have been united since the early 1970s behind an anti-nuclear banner. They say the government hasn’t set up an effective evacuation plan.

“We’ve been trying to buck something so big and so powerful--not only the plant itself but all the muckety-mucks who run it,” Marie Capello, a Seabrook resident, said. “But I don’t see how I can stop doing any little thing until the bitter end.”