N.J. Nuclear Plant Closing Early [Oyster Creek, nation's oldest nuclear power plant]

[enough]

Source: New York Times

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — The nation's oldest nuclear power plant will close in 2019 — 10 years earlier than planned — but will not have to build costly cooling towers, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The people, who spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the plans ahead of an announcement expected Thursday, said the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in the Forked River section of Lacey Township will close a decade earlier than called for under its current license.

In return, the aging plant will not be required to build one or more cooling towers to replace its current technology, which draws 1.4 billion gallons of water a day from Barnegat Bay, killing billions of aquatic creatures each year.

The agreement over the closing of the plant, located 60 miles east of Philadelphia and 75 miles south of New York City, is between Chicago-based owner Exelon Corp. and New Jersey officials, who will drop their demand that it build one or more cooling towers — a technology environmentalists have long wanted.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/12/08/business/AP-US-Oyster-Creek-Early-Closing.html?hp

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Who needs nukes when we have all that Marcellus Shale gas?

Natural gas has only 55% of the CO2 of coal. Such a bargain!

So what if it carries gaseous radon? No one will even notice it. And if there are any problems from the radon, we can blame it on Oyster Creek! It's a two-fer!

--d!

[TheMadMonk]

2. My question is why couldn't they do something akin to deep ocean...

...sewage outfall to alleviate the problem? It's a now obsolete way of dealing with costal polution by distributing sewage discharge over an area a reasonable distance offshore.

Many tens of miles of underwater pipleline could be had for a fraction of the price of cooling towers. By distributing intake and outflow over a suitably expanded area, many (if not all) of the major issues here are addressed. The biggest "drawback" I see, is that a merely warm outflow has the potential to encourage excessive growth in surrounding waters.