Oyster Creek nuclear power station is a single unit 619MWe boiling water reactor power plant located on an 800 acre (3.2 km²) site adjacent to the Oyster Creek in the Forked River section of Lacey Township in Ocean County, New Jersey. The facility is currently owned and operated by Exelon Corporation and is the oldest operating nuclear power plant in the United States. The plant first came online on December 1, 1969, and is licensed to operate through April 9, 2029. The plant gets its cooling water from Barnegat Bay, a brackish estuarythat empties into the Atlantic Ocean through theBarnegat Inlet.
Oyster Creek is one of four nuclear power units in New Jersey. The others are the two at the Salem NuclearPower Plant, and the Hope Creek Nuclear Generating Station. As of January 1, 2005, New Jersey ranked 10th among the 31 States with nuclear capacity for totalMWe generated. In 2003, nuclear electricity generated over one half of the electricity in the State.[1]
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[edit]Design
Oyster Creek is a single unit 619 MWe boiling water reactor power plant which first came online onDecember 1, 1969; it is the oldest operating nuclear power plant in the United States. Located 50 miles east of Philadelphia and 75 miles south of New York City,[2] the plant gets its cooling water fromBarnegat Bay, a brackish estuary that empties into the Atlantic Ocean through the Barnegat Inlet.
Oyster Creek was originally licensed for 40 years, but in April 2009 its licence was extended for another 20 years by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "Based on the Atomic Energy Act, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issues licenses for commercial power reactors to operate for up to 40 years and allows these licenses to be renewed for up to another 20 years. A 40-year license term was selected on the basis of economic and antitrust considerations, not technical limitations."[3]
There was some opposition from anti-nuclear groups. According to Harvey Wasserman: "The re-licensing process did not require a test of metals in the core, which can become dangerously embrittled after decades of exposure to super-hot water and intense radiation."[2] Wasserman, who is not a scientist, edits NukeFree.Org. He is a journalist, author and activist, and speaks at anti-nuclear demonstrations.
[edit]License extension
In July 2005, Exelon submitted an application to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a 20-year extension of the existing 40-year licence for Oyster Creek, which was due to expire in 2009. According to a 2006 survey commissioned by the operators, relicensing of the power plant was supported by the majority of citizens living in areas surrounding the plant, and by local elected officials.[4]However, some local opposition to re-licensing was evident at public hearings on the issue. On May 31,2007, several Ocean County residents attended the Atomic Safety Licensing Board (ASLB) hearing in the county administration building. At that meeting, several of the local residents were opposed to re-licensing of the nuclear power plant. [5]
The ASLB's decision on the May 31, 2007 hearing led to a full public hearing on the issue of the monitoring of corrosion in the plant's drywell liner. The hearing was slated for September 24, 2007 in the county seat Toms River. [6] In 2008, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board twice rejected citizens' contentions concerning Oyster Creek. The majority of the three-judge panel ruled in favor of the plant, deciding "that the group's motion did not follow the proper guidelines for late-filed contentions and failed to link an alleged inadequacy to a significant safety issue." [7]
In May 2007, the state Attorney General's Office, on behalf of the state Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), petitioned the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals to compel the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider the potential for a terrorist attack as part of the criteria for Oyster Creek's licensing renewal process. [8] In July 2007, the NJDEP faulted both Exelon and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for relying on environmental studies that were up to 30 years old at the time of Exelon's relicensing application. The NJDEP refused to make a "positive consistency determination" for Oyster Creek, as required by the federal Coastal Zone Management Act. The positive determination is required for all applicants seeking to relicense an existing facility. [9]
On April 8, 2009 the plant was granted a license extension to operate until April 9, 2029. This came a week after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 3-1 against an appeal by anti-nuclear groups. [10]
As of June 2009, five groups who object to the relicensing of Oyster Creek are appealing the decision in the federal court. Richard Webster, attorney for five environmental and citizens groups challenging the relicensing, says the NRC did not have sufficient information to determine whether the plant can operate safely for the next 20 years.[11][12]
“This has been the most extensive license renewal review to date, including the first adjudicatory hearing of a license renewal application,” said Eric Leeds, NRC’s director of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. “The staff’s licensing and inspection scrutiny, along with the independent contributions of the ACRS, the ASLB and various citizen groups, should give the people of New Jersey added confidence that Oyster Creek will remain safe during its continued operation.” [13]
A week after Oyster Creek got its new 20-year license, workers found a tritium leak which came from two buried pipes that had not been properly insulated the last time they were worked on in 1991. A second tritium leak was discovered in August, 2009, from a pipe leading into an electrical turbine building. The tritium contaminated groundwater on the plant site and has been flowing into Barnegat Bay, but the NRC says that "drinking water supplies and recreational fishing and crabbing in the area remain safe".[14]
[edit]Environment
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Oyster Creek has certain beneficial attributes in respect to the air quality of Ocean County and the State of New Jersey by generating electricity with virtually no air emissions.[15] Each year it operates, Oyster Creek essentially avoids some 7.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide that would be produced in coastal New Jersey by a replacement coal power plant — equivalent to 2 million cars, or nearly half of all the cars in New Jersey. The plant emits none of the EPA-defined criteria pollutants (including ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate, and lead) as well as zero mercury (emitted by coal fired power plants).
New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and Department of Environmental Protection data concerning CO2 emissions from electric power generation in the state for the year 2005 indicates 33.4 million metric tons of CO2 (consumption-based estimate derived from kWh electricity sales measured at the retail level). Therefore, should operation of the Oyster Creek plant be discontinued for whatever reason, the additional 7.5 million metric tons of CO2 emitted by a replacement base-load resource would constitute a 22% increase in the state's CO2 emissions to more than 40m metric tons. Such a massive, immediate and unavoidable increase in CO2 emissions would be in dramatic conflict with the state's groundbreaking carbon legislation known as the Global Warming Response Act of 2007. The Act imposes a legal requirement that the state achieve a 25% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020 and 80% below 2006 levels by 2050. Until Oyster Creek can be replaced with in-kind new nuclear generation, its continued operation is critical to achieving New Jersey's greenhouse gas emissions reduction objectives.
Exelon recognizes its responsibility regarding stewardship of the Ocean County environment and the plant's impact upon it. Their implied commitment is not limited to mitigating for negative impacts; it includes support for environmental organizations that are working to improve New Jersey 's environment.
As a part of Exelon Corporation, Oyster Creek follows the corporation's clear environmental policy. It is the company's commitment to constantly improve its environmental performance and to promote a corporate culture where full compliance with environmental regulations is the minimum level of acceptable performance.
Oyster Creek's owners also claim to pursue a policy of helping local and statewide environmental projects and organizations improve the environment, through financial support or the resources of its employees' time and expertise.[16] Supported environmental projects include:
- "Sport Fish Fund," a not-for-profit organization that administers the reef-building fund to construct a 46-acre (190,000 m2) patch reef within the Barnegat Light Reef. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Division of Fish and Wildlife oversees the Artificial Reef Program.
- Purchasing a boat for the Rutgers University Cooperative Extension Service Clam Restoration Project, working to re-establish clam beds in the Barnegat Bay.
- Partnering with Drexel University to track sea turtles, which are rescued at the station. The turtles recoup at the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, before being returned to their habitat.
- New Jersey Audubon Society in regard of the society's efforts to help rescue and clean waterfowl impacted by an oil spill on the Delaware River
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