Lacey Officials Discuss Life After Oyster Creek

LACEY TOWNSHIP, NJ - Township officials knew that Oyster Creek was going to close. But they were shocked when the plant's owner decided to close it more than a year earlier than the original deadline .

"It did come out of nowhere," Township Committeeman Gary Quinn said at a recent committee meeting. "It kind of set us back. It was very unexpected. Certainly it was something we would have preferred not to see so soon."

"I was stunned by it," Deputy Mayor Timothy McDonald said. "While it was a shock to all of us, the plans just have to be expedited. That's all there is to it. I wish we had been given more notice, but we weren't."

Future plans for the site on Route 9 will have to be stepped up now to concentrate on how to make up some of the revenue that will be lost when the plant closes in October.

The $2.2 million in property taxes Lacey receives from Oyster Creek will continue, at least for now, Quinn said.
"That will continue to come in, no matter what, unless they start to dismantle buildings," he said. "Most of the buildings will remain during the decommissioning process."

Lacey also receives $11.1 million annually from the state energy tax, but how much of that amount comes from Oyster Creek has to be determined, Quinn said.

Spent nuclear fuel

The problem of the plant's spent fuel was never anticipated when the township allowed Oyster Creek to be built back in the 1960s .

"There was never an agreement with Lacey...for it to become a spent storage facility," he said.

But plans for the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada never materialized, so any municipality that hosts a nuclear plant is struggling with the same problem, Quinn said.

"We believe it (spent fuel) will be here for the lives of everyone in this room and probably beyond that," he said.

Quinn is hopeful that Lacey and other towns that host nuclear plants and store spent fuel can band together to receive compensation for some of the money once set aside for the Yucca Mountain facility.

"If it comes down to it and we have to file a class action suit...we are going to do what we have to do," he said.

Other revenue sources

Lacey will renew its focus on the proposed Town Center, which officials hope will bring in much needed revenue and jobs.

"The town center is never going to replace the power plant," Quinn said. "At least it will bring revenue sources."

New ideas for businesses that could be located in the Town Center are welcome, he said.

"We are not looking to bring in new pizza parlors or more nail salons," Quinn said. "We don't want to duplicate. The Town Center is not a fix for loosing the power plant."

Municipal tax increases from the loss of the plant could result eventually, but he reminded residents that only 16 percent a resident's total bill goes to support municipal services, he said.

"But it's not going to be a situation where anybody's tax bill doubles," Quinn said.

Although the plant will cease operations in October, rather than December 2019, Oyster Creek will still have to follow a lengthy process to decommission the plant.

"Our regulations state that the decommissioning process for a nuclear power plant must be completed within 60 years," federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil R. Sheehan has said.

Exelon will have to submit a Post-Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report (PSDAR) - a roadmap for how it plans to decommission Oyster Creek, he said.

Decommissioning options include immediate dismantlement, long-term storage (also known as SAFSTOR) or a hybrid approach, which would include some early dismantlement of structures, followed by some long-term storage, with the rest of the dismantlement taking place some time in the future, Sheehan said.

"We will review the PSDAR to ensure it complies with our decommissioning requirements," he said.

Oyster Creek is the oldest nuclear plant in the United States. It went online in December of 1969.

Photo: Courtesy of Exelon Corporation