The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Agency and the plant's owners, Chicago-based Exelon Corp., insist the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station can operate safely until it is 60 years old.
Not everyone is convinced. "This plant is a 1969 Buick in the age of the Prius,"
"Talk about cash for clunkers: This is the biggest clunker that's out there, and the people of New Jersey are on the hook for it for the next 20 years."
Oyster Creek went online Dec. 1, 1969, the same day as the Nine Mile Point Nuclear Generating Station near Oswego, N.Y. But Oyster Creek's original license was granted first, technically making it the oldest of the nation's 104 commercial nuclear reactors that are still operating.
Located about 60 miles east of Philadelphia and 75 miles south of New York City, Oyster Creek generates 636 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 600,000 homes a year, and provides 9 percent of New Jersey's electricity.
In April, the NRC granted Oyster Creek a new 20-year license after it dismissed objections from anti-nuclear and environmental groups.
But it can still be operated safely, said Darrell Roberts, director of the NRC's Division of Reactor Safety. "The agency believes the plant is operating safely, or we wouldn't allow it to operate," he said.Just a week after Oyster Creek got its new 20-year license, workers replacing a cable to an emergency service water pump found detectable levels of tritium in water nearby. The leak was determined to have come 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, this time from a pipe leading into an electrical turbine building.
The tritium contaminated groundwater on the plant site and has been flowing into a discharge canal that leads into the fragile Barnegat Bay.
Tritium occurs naturally in the environment at very low levels and may be released as steam from nuclear reactors. It also can leak into soil and groundwater.
The leaks have prompted the NRC to order its staff to look for better ways to detect and prevent leaks in buried pipes at all U.S. nuclear power plants.
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