Oldest nuclear plant set to close in fall

Environmentalists say it killed bay’s marine life

LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. —The oldest active nuclear power plant in the United States is set to shut down in October, more than a year ahead of schedule.

Chicago-based Exelon Generation said the Oyster Creek plant in Lacey Township, New Jersey, will close this fall. It had a deadline of Dec. 31, 2019, under an agreement with state authorities.

The company says it is becoming too costly to operate the plant amid low power prices.

The company will offer jobs to all 500 Oyster Creek workers elsewhere in the company, said Bryan Hanson, Exelon’s president and chief nuclear officer.

Oyster Creek went online Dec. 1, 1969, the same day as the Nine Mile Point Nuclear Generating Station near Oswego, New York. Oyster Creek’s original license was granted first, making it the oldest of the nation’s commercial nuclear reactors that are still operating.

The company reached a deal with New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie in 2010 to shut the plant down 10 years earlier than normal in return for not having to build costly cooling towers at the plant site.

Environmentalists have long faulted the warmer-than-normal water that exits from the Oyster Creek plant for harming or killing marine life in the fragile Barnegat Bay.

“It should have closed a long time ago,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.o happen, so it’s vital for our coast that it’s closing early. This plant is a dinosaur and it’s good that’s its going extinct.”

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted Oyster Creek a new 20-year license in April 2009, rejecting criticism from a coalition of residents and environmental groups that the plant was too old and degraded to operate safely for another two decades.