Oldest Nuclear Plant in US Refuses Cooling Towers
source: http://pressofatlanticcity.com/news/top_three/article_a74b51ba-31e4-11df-bc15-001cc4c002e0.html
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- SarahAna
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Oyster Creek Generating Station, the nation's oldest nuclear power plant, refuses to install state mandated cooling towers. It threatens to shut down instead.
Located in Forked River, New Jersey, on the Oyster Creek, the power plant supplies enough energy to power about 600,000 NJ homes. The plant also employs 700 employees in the area. It's cooling system, dating back to 1969, kills 2 billion shrimp, tens of thousands of fish, crabs and clams each year. Oyster Creek is a tributary of the Barnegat Bay, the body of water separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the Jersey shore's beloved barrier islands. The director of the NJ Sierra Club said that "the plant is the biggest source of thermal pollution on the bay", which disrupts the temperature of the ecosystem.
The cost of a closed-cycle cooling system (which would call for cooling towers with water vapor coming from them like in many other power plants) is very high. It would cost $700-800 million and take seven years to build, but the plant's license ends in 2029 so the cooling towers would only be in use for 12 years.
I live in this town.. So I don't know. It would be bad if the plant shut down. Not only would the state lose all kinds of money, their would be huge initial fish kills at the change in temperature! I'm not an advocate of the power plant, but if it's going to be so stubborn. Won't building cooling towers make even more jobs, for 7 years? The Barnegat Bay ecosystem deserves more than excuses from Exelon.
Article at link:
http://pressofatlanticcity.com/news/top_three/article_a74b51ba-31e4-11df-bc15-00...
Located in Forked River, New Jersey, on the Oyster Creek, the power plant supplies enough energy to power about 600,000 NJ homes. The plant also employs 700 employees in the area. It's cooling system, dating back to 1969, kills 2 billion shrimp, tens of thousands of fish, crabs and clams each year. Oyster Creek is a tributary of the Barnegat Bay, the body of water separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the Jersey shore's beloved barrier islands. The director of the NJ Sierra Club said that "the plant is the biggest source of thermal pollution on the bay", which disrupts the temperature of the ecosystem.
The cost of a closed-cycle cooling system (which would call for cooling towers with water vapor coming from them like in many other power plants) is very high. It would cost $700-800 million and take seven years to build, but the plant's license ends in 2029 so the cooling towers would only be in use for 12 years.
I live in this town.. So I don't know. It would be bad if the plant shut down. Not only would the state lose all kinds of money, their would be huge initial fish kills at the change in temperature! I'm not an advocate of the power plant, but if it's going to be so stubborn. Won't building cooling towers make even more jobs, for 7 years? The Barnegat Bay ecosystem deserves more than excuses from Exelon.
Article at link:
http://pressofatlanticcity.com/news/top_three/article_a74b51ba-31e4-11df-bc15-00...
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