Oyster Creek nuclear power plant to shut down

The Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station is set to retire today after nearly 50 years in operation.

The plant, located in Forked River, New Jersey, first came online on Dec. 1, 1969. At nearly 49 years old, it is the oldest commercially operated nuclear power plant in the United States.

While the station was initially supposed to close on Dec. 31, 2019, its retirement was accelerated to coincide with the plant’s fuel and maintenance cycle.

Oyster Creek – a 625-megawatt (MW) single-unit General Electric boiling water reactor — generated
5.4 million megawatt-hours of electricity in 2017. That is almost twice as much as all of the solar photovoltaic systems in New Jersey.

The plant’s 40-year license expired in 2009, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave it a 20-year license renewal. However, in 2010, Oyster Creek’s owner-operator Exelon reached an agreement with New Jersey state environmental regulators to retire the plant in 2019.

Several factors impacted this decision including local water safety concerns and an $800 million price tag to install cooling towers to meet new environmental standards.

Oyster Creek was one of four nuclear power reactors in New Jersey along with Salem Generating Station Units 1 and 2 and Hope Creek Nuclear Generating Station Unit 1. Oyster Creek represented about 15 percent of the state’s nuclear capacity and about 7 percent of total electricity production. Overall, nuclear power accounted for 45 percent of the state’s total electricity production last year.

Oyster Creek is the sixth nuclear power plant to shut down in the past five years. There are now 98 operating nuclear reactors at 59 plants in the United States. However, 12 more reactors are scheduled to retire within the next seven years. Increased competition from natural gas and renewable energy sources has made it more difficult for nuclear power plants to compete in electricity markets.

Once a nuclear plant closes, or retires, it moves to the decommissioning phase. Decommissioning involves safely dismantling the plant, cleaning it, decontaminating it, and removing and storing spent nuclear fuel. The typical decommissioning period for a nuclear power plant is about 60 years.