Oyster Creek nuclear plant offline after transformer failure

LACEY TOWNSHIP — The Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station has been in "cold shutdown" since one of the plant's two aging transformers failed last weekend.

"It was a conservative decision to shut down the unit to repair that transformer," plant spokesman David Benson said. "When we finish these repairs, our station will be more reliable in the summer, when people really need energy the most."

Each transformer is the size of a "small cottage," Benson said.

"They essentially do the same thing," he said. "They convert electricity for use."

The transformer that failed on April 25 was a 30-year-old replacement that Exelon brought in February to replace another transformer that caught fire on Feb. 2, he said.

Plant operators declared an "unusual event" after the Feb. 2 fire.

Exelon officials and plant engineers are still evaluating the repair of the replacement transformer, Benson said.

"This was just bad luck," he said. "A relay in there caused an issue with a series of fans, and operators recognized it and shut the unit down.

The remaining transformer is roughly the same age, Benson said.

Oyster Creek continued to operate on one transformer after the Feb. 2 fire, but that is not the case now.

"Right now the unit is in cold shutdown," he said.

There was no risk to the public or the plant during the incident, Benson said.

"There was no impact on the environment or the fish, either," he said.

The transformers at the plant have nothing

to do with the nuclear reactor, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil A. Sheehan said Monday.

"It's considered on the non-nuclear side of the plant," he said. "It's on the power side of the plant as opposed to the nuclear side of the plant."

The transformer problems are the second incident at Oyster Creek in less than a month after the NRC relicensed the 40- year-old plant for another 20 years.

The radioactive isotope tritium was found in a concrete vault and a 20-foot-deep monitoring well on the plant site on April 15.

Benson has said the tritium poses no threat to the public. The source of the isotope has not yet been determined, he said.

And that alarms Brick resident Janet Tauro, a member of Grandmothers, Mothers and More for Energy Safety, one of seven groups in a coalition that opposed the plant's relicensing.

"Tritiated water is a very serious issue and it's being treated in kind of a lighthearted manner," she said. "If it's 20 feet down in the water table, it's going to travel."

The NRC jumped the gun by relicensing the aging plant when there are too many unresolved safety issues, she said.

"It was completely premature," Tauro said. "You have the outstanding issues with the drywell and then you have the transformer and the tritium leaks."

Exelon needs to have an adequate aging management plan, she said.

"It was a rush job," Tauro said of the relicensing. "They [NRC] did it to get under the gun of the April 9 deadline. And guess who suffers? The public."

The coalition groups were slated to meet on Wednesday to discuss what further action they may take, she said.

"We are actively looking at all of our options and determining which is the best way to proceed," Tauro said. "This issue is by no means dead. And the NRC and Exelon haven't heard the last of us."