Looking good.Japan no reason to de-license NJ nuke plant
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says nothing it has learnedfrom the Japanese nuclear disaster warrants revoking the license of thenation's oldest nuclear power plant in New Jersey.
The agency filed its response Tuesday to a federal appeals courtthat had asked if the Japanese crisis should lead to a re-thinking ofthe Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station's current 20-year licensethat was awarded two years ago.
The agency says that while it is studying the ongoing crisis inJapan, it remains confident of the safety of U.S. nuclear plants.
"Licensed nuclear power reactors in the United States arecurrently safe and may continue to operate under NRC's comprehensivescheme of safety regulations and inspections, pending development of anynew safety measures that emerge," the agency wrote.
A coalition of anti-nuclear groups is challenging Oyster Creek's2009 license renewal. It asked the appeals court to reconsider whetherOyster Creek's license should have been renewed, citing concerns aboutits age and wear and tear on the plant, which went online in 1969.
The New Jersey Sierra Club says the NRC has not learned anything from the Japanese disaster.
"NRC stands for No Regulatory Commission," said Jeff Tittel, thegroup's director. "The agency is a cheerleader for industry and looksthe other way it comes to relicensing, especially around issues ofpublic safety.
"The NRC should be saying license renewals across the countryshould be on hold while we reevaluate the safety of these facilities,"said Tittel. "This brief shows the NRC will not learn any lessons fromJapan, just as they did not learn any lessons from Three Mile Island orChernobyl. Given what we are learning about Japan, it does not make anysense and could be outright dangerous to keep Oyster Creek open."
The NRC noted in its response that it adopted new standards andpractices following Three Mile Island, and the Sept. 11, 2001, terroristattacks.
"As with the post-TMI and post-9/11 regulatory enhancements, anylessons learned from the Fukushima Daiichi event will be appliedgenerically to all reactors, including Oyster Creek, as appropriate totheir location, design, construction, and operation," the agency wrote."No safety, technical, or policy justification exists to single outparticular reactors for different treatment just because of their placein the licensing queue or status on judicial review."
Oyster Creek's license allows it to operate until 2029. But itsowners, Chicago-based Exelon Corp., struck a deal with New Jersey inDecember to shut Oyster Creek 10 years early, in 2019. In return, thestate dropped its insistence that Oyster Creek build costly coolingtowers to drastically reduce the number of fish and small aquaticcreatures the plan's operations kill each yea