For Immediate Release
January 4, 2013 Contact Jeff Tittel, 609-558-9100
Sierra Club Calls for Closing of Oyster Creek
Safety concerns presented by Hurricane Sandy should be at the forefront during Monday's Oyster Creek Safety Advisory Panel meeting in Toms River.Since the Hurricane, a crack or cracks have been found at the Oyster Creek Nuclear Plant.Following Hurricane Sandy, Oyster Creek was in a state of alert due to flood waters coming close to the reactor.Water came within 4 inches of the backup pumps which could have resulted in a meltdown.Two-thirds of emergency sirens were inoperable during Sandy.The plant was allowed to be refueled and go online despite all these issues.This plant needs to be closed down and not reopened. These safety problems continue to not be addressed and a key reason why this power plant needs to be closed. There have been 8 incidents since relicensing.
"This Panel should be meeting to figure out ways to close this plant as Hurricane Sandy was a wakeup call on just how vulnerable this plant is.With the plant's age, the storm surges, and one problem after another, if they were really a safety panel they would be figuring out ways to shut this plant down.So far we are lucky that we have not had a disaster at this plant but one day that luck will run out unless it is closed," said Jeff Tittel,Director of NJ Sierra Club. The Sierra Club has long questioned the safety of OysterCreek in Forked River and has urged the panel to recommend the plant be closed down. Extreme weather events at OysterCreek could impact the facility's corroded pipes that leak radioactive tritium or the corroding drywall liner of the reactor containment vessel. The wall is currently one-half as thick as when the plant opened in the late 1960s. Luckily the Oyster Creek was being refueled and was not in full operation when Hurricane Sandy hit, otherwise the impacts could have been much worse. The impacts from Hurricane Sandy would have been lessened if the plant had a closed loop system. This is what we have said all along that the safety issues at the plant; with storm surges and flooding they should be required to have cooling towers. Without cooling towers, Oyster Creek depends on continuous withdrawals from waterways to cool spent fuel, making the plant more vulnerable during power outages and to disruption of their water intake systems. Had Governor Christie adopted the Lisa Jackson permit requiring cooling towers the plant would either be a lot safer for storm surges or would be shut down by this point.There was flooding on site and some of the backup systems failed as a result. We knew about the power outage issues before and called for more redundancies in the system and for the elevation of those systems. We need this plant closed to prevent a major disaster from occurring at the Shore.
"The NRC instead of being a regulator has been a cheerleader for the industry. If they were concerned about safety they would not give the oldest plant in the nation a 20 year license. This is the 8^th incident at the plant since it had been relicensed. There needs to be an independent investigation not just the NRC to make sure that this is plant is safe," said Tittel. The design of OysterCreek is the same as the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1, a GE Mark I BWR. Even a moderate hurricane or flooding at OysterCreek could impact the above ground spent fuel rod storage system. The Japanese reactor had a cement dome over the containment vessel and OysterCreek does not, possibly making it more at risk if a build up of hydrogen occurs.
"This plant has the same design as Fukushima. The plant is in a coastal area without cooling towers and is vulnerable to storm surges and flooding. In some ways with all the terrible things that have happened with this storm, not having a bigger problem at Oyster Creek was good news amid all the bad, but does not mean next time it will not be worse,"said Jeff Tittel. In the past we have also raised concerns about the plant's warning system and excavation procedures and routes during an emergency. Ocean County's population doubles on a summer weekend. There is close to 1 million people in a 12-13 mile radius of the power plant. It is hard enough to get home from a day at the beach, let alone when you have to evacuate people during an emergency. Without cooling towers Oyster Creek impacts the ecology of the Barnegat Bay as well. The plant kills billions of fish larva, fish eggs, and a variety of aquatic species from Bay anchovies to glass shrimp. The pumps act as a giant vacuum, sucking up and destroying everything in its reach. The biggest problem is the superheated water entering the Bay. Discharge waters measured hundreds of yards away from the discharge point reach 97 degrees, the equivalent of a hot tub, four feet below the surface. This discharge does not include the tritium that is discharged into groundwater. The dilution system for the discharge does not do an adequate job in dropping the temperature of the water or diluting pollutants before it enters the Bay.
"We believe that this plant should be closed. It is the oldest plant in the nation and has serious problems from tritium leaks to corrosion of dry wall liner. It is in a densely populated area and the evacuation plan will not work. The plant is subject to flooding and storm surges. This is the wrong plant in the wrong place and needs to be closed," said Jeff Tittel.
-- Kate Millsaps Conservation Program Coordinator NJ Chapter of the Sierra Club 609-656-7612