nuclear-news

Oyster Creek, the oldest of New Jersey’s four nuclear power plants, will shut down Sept. 17, but some of its main buildings will remain standing for nearly six decades at the Ocean County site.

That’s all new information contained in a report on the plant’s decommissioning filed by Oyster Creek’s owner, Exelon, with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The company also said it had chosen a method that will span 60 years to complete the dismantling of the plant, versus beginning immediately.

Exelon had originally planned to shutter Oyster Creek in 2019 then, this past February, moved the date up to this October. That’s now going to be mid-September at the end of the station’s current fuel cycle, according to Suzanne D’Ambrosio, spokeswoman for Oyster Creek said Tuesday.

According to the report Exelon filed with the NRC, it has chosen to put the plant into long-term storage — a method known as SAFSTOR — and take advantage of the NRC’s rules on decommissioning plants which allow a company up to 60 years to raze a facility.  “The SAFSTOR option is the most economical and radiologically safe plan for decommissioning,” D’Ambrosio said. “It allows for normal radioactive decay, produces less waste and exposes our workers to lower levels of radiation.”

Once it stops producing electricity Sept. 17, the process of moving the radioactive fuel from the reactor core to a spent fuel storage pool begins, something Exelon says should be done by Sept. 30.

In the coming years work will begin to remove some smaller buildings at the site, according to the report. The radioactive spent fuel rods will eventually be removed from the fuel pool and be placed in dry storage casks, a task Exelon says will be done by 2024.

The site will be maintained for 50-plus years until Exelon begins removing the larger components at the site beginning in June 2075 and wrapping up by December 2077, according to its report.

Some of the larger sections of the plant may actually be barged from near the site, according to the report.

The decommissioning is expected to cost the utility about $1.4 billion, Exelon says.

Environmentalists who have long been critical of the 620-megawatt plant, said they are glad to see it close.

“Oyster Creek has been a safety threat to Ocean County, polluting Barnegat Bay, and killing thousands of fish over the years,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “Shutting down the Oyster Creek plant will reduce the algae blooms, improve fish populations and help restore the overall ecosystem of the Barnegat Bay.”