At Oyster
Creek, it is our goal to provide you with helpful information
about the station. Below is a list of questions and answers
that we receive most frequently from community members.
If you have a question that is not answered below, please
contact us and we would be happy
to respond to it.
License Renewal
When did Oyster Creek begin operating?
The Oyster Creek Generating Station began
commercial service in 1969 and is licensed to operate until
2009, which is why the plant recently submitted an application
to renew its license for another twenty years. Since beginning
service, more than $1.2 billion has been reinvested into
the plant to upgrade and improve its operations.
Why is the plant renewing its operating
license?
The 40-year operating term reflects the
accounting amortization period generally used by electric
utility companies for large capital investments such as
Oyster Creek. The term is not based on safety, technical
or environmental issues. Because Oyster Creek continues
to operate at the high standards set by the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) and the State of New Jersey and is a valuable
component of New Jersey's electricity supply, the plant
is seeking a renewal of its license.
What are the steps in the license
renewal process?
First, the plant must submit an application
to the NRC for renewal, which Oyster Creek submitted in
July 2005. The application includes general, environmental
and technical information in compliance with federal regulations.
After the application is submitted, the public may submit
a request for a hearing.
The NRC staff reviews the application on
two parallel “tracks” – a safety review and an environmental
review. In the safety review process, there are a number
of steps including a thorough review of the application's
safety sections, an informal public meeting, an audit of
the plant's aging management programs and inspections. For
the environmental review, a public meeting is held, site
audits are conducted, and an environmental impact statement
is prepared, commented on by the public and revised.
Environmental
How does Oyster Creek affect air
emissions?
Oyster Creek has a positive impact on the
air quality of Ocean County and the State of New Jersey
. Each year it operates, Oyster Creek essentially avoids
some 7.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide that would
be produced in coastal New Jersey by a replacement power
plant. If a coal plant replaced Oyster Creek, the replacement
plant would produce carbon emissions including nitrogen
oxide and carbon dioxide equivalent to 2 million cars, or
nearly half of all the cars in New Jersey.
How is Oyster Creek involved in
the environmental community?
Oyster Creek is a committed environmental
steward and takes every precaution to ensure all environmental
regulations are met. Additionally, Oyster Creek recently
donated $80,000 to the “Sport Fish Fund,” a not-for-profit
organization that administers the reef-building fund. The
donation was used to construct a 46-acre patch reef within
the Barnegat Light Reef, located 3.5 nautical miles offshore
of Barnegat Lighthouse.
Also, the plant purchased a boat for the
Rutgers Cooperative Extension Service Clam Restoration Project.
The project team is working to re-establish clam beds in
the Barnegat Bay. The project team will use this boat to
more effectively implement this and other important bay
environmental projects into the future.
Safety
What steps do you take to ensure
Oyster Creek is running safely?
Our motto is that if we are not operating
safely, we do not operate. Each day, safety is the top priority
of all employees and dictates how every job or task is completed.
Safety equipment is regularly inspected and plant improvements
and upgrades total $1.2. Some of the upgrades include $5
million to add noble metals chemistry to reactor coolant
to inhibit corrosion; $14 million to replace and refurbish
low-pressure turbine rotors; and $6 million on new plant
computer systems to monitor reactor and steam system performance.
How is the plant's security protected?
Prior to the terrorist attacks on September
11, 2001, nuclear plants were the most secured commercial
facilities in the country. The NRC did, however, re-evaluate
plant security and identified areas to reinforce and enhance
security measures at plants nationwide. Per NRC's requirements,
Oyster Creek recently completed significant upgrades, totaling
$20 million, to enhance the plant's security. Some of the
upgrades include more security guards, additional security
guard training, new and more robust vehicle barriers, miles
of additional fencing, guard towers and a new gate guardhouse.
Plant Operations
How does Oyster Creek work?
There are two types nuclear plants in the
United States , the boiling water reactor and the pressurized
water reactor. Both plants operate on the same principles
and are cooled by ordinary water. The coolant – water –
is the main link in the process that converts fission energy
to electrical energy.
Oyster Creek is a boiling water reactor.
The water is heated by the nuclear fuel and boils to steam
directly in the reactor vessel. It is then piped directly
to the turbine. The turbine spins, driving the electric
generator, producing electricity.
What is uranium used for?
While some power plants burn oil, coal,
or natural gas to produce electricity, nuclear power relies
on small, half-inch long, uranium pellets. Each pellet is
capable of releasing as much energy as one ton of coal.
And a single ton of uranium releases energy equivalent to
about 400,000 barrels of oil. But unlike fossil fuels, nuclear
power releases no combustion products to the environment.
It is clean energy.
The heat generated by nuclear power results
from a process called fission, which is the splitting of
atoms by even tinier particles, called neutrons. Fission
takes place within the nuclear reactor vessel.
These reactor vessels contain the uranium
pellets, stacked end-to-end in fuel rods. The fuel rods
are arranged in bundles called fuel assemblies. These fuel
assemblies making up the reactor core.
The faster the atoms split, the more heat
is produced. The rate at which the atoms are split is controlled
by special rods, which absorb neutrons. These control rods
fit into spaces between selected fuel rods. As the rods
are raised, more heat is produced. As they are lowered,
fission slows. When the control rods are fully lowered,
fission stops.
At this point, water takes over. The water
is heated by the nuclear fuel and boils to steam directly
in the reactor vessel. It is then piped directly to the
turbine. The turbine spins, driving the electric generator,
producing electricity.
How is the uranium and radioactive
material stored?
Oyster Creek and other nuclear plants in
the U.S. were designed and built with redundant and multiple
barriers to prevent radioactive material from escaping during
normal operations and during an accident.
The first barrier is the fuel itself: the
solid ceramic uranium pellets. The uranium atoms that make
up the pellets split, or fission, which creates the heat
essential to turn water into steam that turns the blades
of the turbine-generator. Fission creates radioactive by-products
that remain locked safely inside the ceramic pellets.
The pellets are sealed in metal fuel rods,
12 feet long and half an inch in diameter. Fuel rods are
made of zirconium, which resists heat, radiation and corrosion.
The rods are bundled together into fuel assemblies, which
are placed inside the reactor. The large reactor vessel
has steel walls 8 inches thick. This sits inside of the
Primary Containment structure, which is designed to contain
radiation that could escape from the reactor in the highly
unlikely event of a major accident that involves fuel damage.
Oyster Creek's Primary Containment consists
of a drywell, a pressure suppression chamber, and a vent
system connecting the drywell and the suppression chamber.
The drywell is a steel pressure vessel, in the shape of
an inverted light bulb, with a spherical section and an
upper cylindrical section. The spherical section is partially
embedded in reinforced concrete and transitions into the
non-embedded section through a sand bed region. The non-embedded
portion of the drywell is enclosed by a reinforced concrete
shield wall, separated by a gap designed to allow for expansion
of the drywell shell.
I read that corrosion had been identified
in Oyster Creek's drywell, is that true?
Oyster Creek personnel identified the potential
for corrosion of the drywell beginning in 1980 when water
was noticed coming from the sand bed drains. An extensive
investigation found that the water had leaked from the reactor
cavity, which is an area above the reactor that is filled
with water during refueling outages to allow movement of
fuel between the reactor and the fuel pool.
At that time, personnel took a series of
ultrasonic testing (UT) measurements of the drywell thickness
and found that the corrosion had not impacted the
ability of the drywell to perform its safety function. Oyster
Creek has implemented several corrective actions to prevent
water leakage. For more about Oyster Creek's corrective
actions, click here.
Used Fuel
What happens to the plant's used
fuel?
Used fuel, or sometimes called spent fuel,
from nuclear power plants is safely stored in a storage
system that includes numerous redundancies to ensure its
safekeeping. Spent nuclear fuel decays over time and is
less radioactive than the fuel in the reactor. The used
fuel can be safely cooled by air circulating through their
storage vaults. The radioactive material is contained in
ceramic fuel pellets, which have a melting point of 5,000
degrees and are inside metal rods, which have a melting
point of 3,000 degrees. The fuel assemblies are placed in
thick stainless steel, leak-tight canisters that are welded
shut.
The storage canister is transported in a
thick steel cask that is tightly sealed and then placed
into a reinforced concrete storage vault. The vault walls
are approximately three feet thick and are designed to withstand
natural or man-made events. Oyster Creek's storage facility
is protected with measures that are equivalent to the plant
itself.
Is used fuel from other plants stored
at Oyster Creek?
No, the storage area was designed for only
Oyster Creek used fuel and therefore, only contains Oyster
Creek used fuel. Additionally, NRC regulations and township
guidelines prohibit any other generating station from storing
fuel at the site.
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