Oldest nuclear plant in U.S. closing early
Low power prices make N.J. plant too costly to run, company says
LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. – The oldest active nuclear power plant in the United States will shut down in October, more than a year ahead of schedule.
Chicago-based Exelon Generation says 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. In a release announcing the early shutdown, Exelon said the new timetable will help it “better manage resources as fuel and maintenance costs continue to rise amid historically low power prices.”
Bryan Hanson, Exelon’s president and chief nuclear officer, said the company will offer jobs to all 500 Oyster Creek workers elsewhere in the company.
“I want to thank the thousands of men and women who helped operate Oyster Creek Generating Station safely for the past half-century, providing generations of New Jersey families and businesses with clean, reliable electricity,” he said. “We thank our neighbors for the privilege of allowing us to serve New Jersey for almost 50 years.”
Oyster Creek went online Dec. 1, 1969, the same day as the Nine Mile Point Nuclear Generating Station near Oswego, New York.
But Oyster Creek’s original license was granted first, making it the oldest of the nation’s commercial nuclear reactors still operating.
The shutdown comes as New Jersey lawmakers are debating a $300 million bailout for the nuclear industry. The state’s largest utility, PSEG, has lobbied for the measure and also had Christie’s administration add more “stringent” confidential financial language to block the public release of the data showing it needs the money, according to emails reviewed by the Associated Press.
Environmentalists have long faulted the warmer-than-normal water that exits from the Oyster Creek plant with 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. “...This plant was a disaster waiting to 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.”