Oyster Creek a danger to county, experts say
Nuclear plant's license should not be renewed for 20 more years
BY PATRICIA A. MILLER
Staff Writer

Willie deCamp was on his way up Route 9 north from Waretown on Sept. 11, 2001, shortly after two commercial jets slammed into the World Trade Center.

As he passed the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station on his left, he saw three police cars parked in front of the plant's entrance. Two police officers stood next to each car, their eyes on the sky.

"Each policeman was armed with a pistol," said deCamp, who is chairman of Save Barnegat Bay. "They were standing there just gazing up at the sky and just praying that Osama didn't have Ocean County in mind. The expressions on their faces I can still picture."

DeCamp was one of many who spoke out against the relicensing of the aging nuclear power plant at a "community dialogue" sponsored by the Ocean County League of Women Voters on Feb. 28.

Roughly 150 people attended the forum, which was held in the Mancini room of the Ocean County Library in Toms River. Invitations were sent to every mayor in the county, and federal and state legislators. Saxer hand-delivered invitations to all five Ocean County freeholders.

Two members of the Island Heights Borough Council, Lacey Township Committeeman David Most, who works for AmerGen, the company that operates the plant, and Ocean County Planner David J. McKeon were the only officials who attended the forum.

"We were happy with whoever showed up and disappointed others didn't," Saxer said after the meeting. "They were all invited."

The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will have the final say in whether the 38-year-old nuclear plant should be allowed to operate for another 20 years. Oyster Creek's current license expires on April 9, 2009. The plant was granted its first license on July 2, 1969.

Problems with corrosion and containment

"It is the oldest operating commercial nuclear plant in the country," said Richard Webster, a staff attorney at the Rutgers Environmental Law Center. "We believe for a number of reasons that this plant should not be relicensed for another 20 years."

The plant has an obsolete design and inadequate containment system that poses significant safety, security, environmental and health risks for Ocean County, he said.

"We don't have a competent operator or regulator," he said.

Corrosion in the drywell's shell was discovered in the early 1980s, Webster said.

"By 1992, it was so bad there was very, very severe corrosion," he said.

Webster disagreed with Oyster Creek's contention that there is an adequate amount of thickness in the drywell shell, the "claimed safety margin."

"At best, you have a very small margin," he said. "At worst, you're below the margin already. The first thing on your mind should be current safety. Then you think about relicensing."

The plant is vulnerable to an air attack, either from a commercial jet or a private airplane, said Paul Gunter, the director of the Reactor Watchdog Project of the Nuclear Information and Resources Service.

Oyster Creek stores spent fuel rods at the top of the reactor building, which makes it vulnerable to terrorist attacks and accidents, Gunter said.

"Off-site storage never happened," he said. "The spent fuel storage facility is almost full now."

If the water that circulates around the fuel rods ever drained, the rods would ignite and there would be a "huge" release of radioactivity, Gunter said.

"Any kind of attack from the air could do that," he said. "It's simply not true that the plant could stand up to an air attack."

The risk could be reduced if AmerGen would agree to dry cask storage, which Gunter estimated could run the company between $30 to $100 million in costs.

"We are really saying it's the lesser of two evils," he said. "This has to happen, irrespective of relicensing."

Exelon, AmerGen's parent company, is "pitting its product margins against your safety and security margins," Gunter said.

"Not only do we have a bad design, a deteriorating safety margin ... we also have no regulatory control," he said.

Harmful impacts on health, environment

Oyster Creek emits more Strontium 90 in the air than any other nuclear plant in the country, said Julia L. Huff, the executive director of the Eastern Environmental Law Center and a specialist in environmental law and environmental litigation.

"People sometimes forget that nuclear plants have air emissions," she said. "These are air emissions that are harmful. The biggest emitter of this radioactive isotope is Oyster Creek."

The plant uses 1.5 billion gallons of water each day to circulate through the plant's cooling system. The heated water is discharged into the Forked River and eventually makes its way into Barnegat Bay, she said.

The federal Clean Water Act requires that impingement and entrapment of aquatic life be reduced. The best way to do that is by closed-cycle cooling towers to reduce the impact on organisms that live in and around Barnegat Bay, Huff said.

Fish, endangered sea turtles and larvae that are part of the bay's food chain are often sucked into the system and "cuisinarted" back out into the bay, Huff said.

The NRC's environmental impact statement on Oyster Creek is based on "inadequate" information, she said.

"Some of it is 30 to 35 years old," she said.

The installation of cooling towers is not a license renewal issue, said AmerGen spokesperson Benson after the meeting.

"We don't think that cooling towers are the right option for Oyster Creek or Ocean County," she said. "We believe that installing cooling towers would have a far greater risk on the environment than our current operations, mainly the salt particulates that would come out of the towers."

Several residents questioned how residents within the plant's 10-mile radius would be able to be evacuated in time, in the event of an accident or an attack.

Edward Schilling, a 46-year resident of Toms River, noted the number of military facilities in the area, including Lakehurst Naval Air Station, Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base.

"If it is relicensed, we are captives for the next 20 years," he said. "We are at war. What would be a more valuable target for some of these crazy folks?"

AmerGen representatives were outside the meeting room last week with an information booth, armed with pamphlets and fact sheets.

"Since they didn't ask us to participate, we called the library and Gail Saxer had asked if we could set up a table to provide the public with Oyster Creek and nuclear energy information," Benson said after the meeting.

The forum was a "very one-sided discussion on Oyster Creek," Benson said. "If they truly wanted to educate the public, they should have invited experts from the NRC and Oyster Creek, who are nuclear engineers."