BY PATRICIA A. MILLER
Staff Writer
The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has “no plans” to reconsider holding a public hearing on security issues at the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station, an NRC spokesman said.
“We have repeatedly said that security issues need to be dealt with on an ongoing basis, by us and also by the federal Department of Homeland Security,” said spokesman Neil A. Sheehan. “They have worked with us on infrastructure protection issues. It makes more sense to assess security needs on an ongoing basis.”
The NRC doesn’t consider security issues during the “snapshot period” when they review a plant’s license renewal application, he said.
That’s not what Ocean County Freeholder Director John P. Kelly wanted to hear.
“I’m disappointed that the NRC is taking that position,” Kelly said Monday. “The view they have is that security is something they review ongoing. We are looking at relicensing this for years and years to come. It’s in the public’s interest to know that all issues are discussed and considered.”
Kelly wrote a Feb. 27 letter to NRC Chairman Dale E. Klein asking that the NRC take security concerns into consideration during the relicensing process.
“Obviously, terrorism is now a very real concern for facilities such as Oyster Creek and must be taken into consideration by the NRC in its deliberations,” Kelly said in the letter.
The NRC issued a number of orders requiring that nuclear plants around the country bolster their security after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Sheehan said.
But Kelly said that a public hearing would only yield positive results.
“I’m not sure why the NRC is being as stubborn as they are,” he said. “It’s just plain stubbornness not to hold the public hearings.”
Kelly said that he personally sees no reason why Oyster Creek should not be relicensed.
“I haven’t seen anything that says the facility needs to close, but that’s up to this date,” he said. “There may be something that would change my mind throughout this process.”
Kelly said he would urge the freeholder board to support the state in an appeal to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that security be made part of a nuclear plant’s application review, Kelly noted in his letter.
“While I understand that the 9th Circuit Court decision is not binding on cases brought forth in New Jersey, it makes absolute good public policy to apply that ruling in this case,” he said in the letter.
Brick Mayor Daniel J. Kelly said he is personally against the plant’s relicensing.
“It’s not the greatest idea in the world,” he said.
Council President Stephen C. Acropolis said Oyster Creek’s relicensing has become a political issues.
“If it passes the muster of the NRC, then they should move forward,” he said. “If the NRC finds things they shouldn’t be doing, they won’t be granted a license.”
“I’m not going to tell John Parker in Lacey Township what to do with his town,” Acropolis added. “We have bigger fish to fry than to worry about something that might happen in Lacey Township. I’m more worried about the traffic in Brick on Route 70 than I am about a hypothetical that is very, very remote. Ninety percent of the things we worry about never happen.”
If the plant does close, steps need to be taken to “put something in its place” so the roughly 1,000 people that work at the plant are not out of jobs, Acropolis said.
“We have to spend time controlling the things we have control over,” he said. “I’ll let the people in Lacey Township and the NRC and the anti-nuke people fight those issues out.”
Sheehan also took issue with anti-Oyster Creek activists who repeatedly state that Oyster Creek is the oldest nuclear plant in the country.
A number of nuclear plants came on line in 1970 and 1971, shortly after Oyster Creek did in 1969, Sheehan said.
“There are a whole class of reactors that came on line at the same time,” Sheehan said. “To say it’s [Oyster Creek] the oldest operating reactor in the country gives it a distinction that is much greater than it warrants. It’s among the oldest reactors.”‘