Oyster Creek's new lease on life

The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission handed Ocean County residents something to keep them up nights for the next 20 years by relicensing the oldest nuclear plant in the United States.

The Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station now has official permission to run until April 9, 2029, courtesy of the NRC's decision on April 8. It came one day before the plant's license was set to expire.

But the real decision was made earlier in the week, when the NRC voted 3-1 to dismiss a contention filed by a coalition of citizens and environmental groups that opposed the relicensing.

The contention focused on the integrity of the thickness of the nuclear plant's drywell liner, the frequency of ultrasonic tests in the drywell's sand bed region, and its future conversion.

Producing electricity with nuclear energy was never the issue for the coalition over the nearly four-year-long battle to keep it from being relicensed.

And the issues went far beyond the contention the NRC's Atomic Safety Licensing Board deigned to hear in a series of meetings in Toms River.

The issue was the Oyster Creek plant itself, with its outdated design and past history of operator error, fish kills, sleeping security guards, and dry casks of spent radioactive fuel stored high in the air in the reactor building and in dry steel casks on the grounds of the 800-acre plant.

The issue was the laughable evacuation plan that might have worked in 1928, but is unquestionably an impossibility in the 21st century. Route 9 has not changed one iota since it was carved out of rural Ocean County in the 1920s, except for the traffic.

The U.S. 3rd District Court of Appeals didn't help any when judges ruled against the New Jersey State Department of Environmental Protection on March 31.

The issue there was whether the NRC had to consider the environmental impact of a hypothetical terrorist attack on a nuclear power facility.

The DEP contended that the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 required the analysis of the impact of a terrorist attack.

The NRC denied the DEP's request and said that terrorist attacks were "too far removed from the natural or expected consequences of agency action" to require an environmental impact of a potential terrorist attack.

It's now time for Gov. Jon Corzine to require Exelon, Oyster Creek's owner, to install cooling towers at the plant. Oyster Creek's water discharge permit under the federal Clean Water Act expired more than a decade ago.

Meanwhile, the plant sucks in 1.2 million gallons of Barnegat Bay water each day through its outdated cooling system.

Proponents of Oyster Creek's relicensing have for years ridiculed the coalition's legitimate concerns about the 40-year-old nuclear plant perched on 800 acres in Lacey Township.

Let's hope for the sake of Ocean County residents that Oyster Creek's cheerleaders have been right all along.

If the coalition was right, we all lose.