In a surprise -- and, most likely welcome -- announcement on Tuesday, the timeline to decommission the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station just shrunk. By at least five decades.
Shutting down outdated U.S. nuclear electricity plants is usually a long-term affair because of the harmful radiation that persists. About a month ago, Oyster Creek's owners submitted a closure plan for the nation's oldest active commercial nuke plant taking an estimated 60 years. The lengthy term prompted eye-rolls from the environmental community.
Now, Osyter Creek's owner, Exelon, says it has a deal to shut down the 779-acre site properly in just eight years. It hinges on an agreement for Exelon to sell the entire property to Holtec International, a South Jersey-based engineering and energy-equipment company.
Until now, what most of us knew about Holtec is that it is moving its headquarters from Evesham Township to Camden, thanks to $260 million in state tax breaks, and that South Jersey political power broker George Norcross III sits on Holtec's board. All of that has raised local eyebrows.
But, if Holtec really the keys to a faster-turnaround, responsible Oyster Creek decommissioning, it deserves some well-earned praise. This is good news for Lacey Township, for Ocean County, and for some 500 employees whom Holtec says will keep working as the plant winds down.
A critical element of the shortcut seems to be Holtec's assertion that it can remove spent, but still radiologically active, fuel rods and send them to an ""autonomous consolidated interim storage facility" in New Mexico, for which Holtec would apply for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license.
The big bugaboo to rapid decommissioning is a lack of an approved long-term facility anywhere in the country that can accept spent fuel rods. This problem affects not only Oyster Creek and other "going-out-of-business" sites, but also ongoing nuke plants like PSEG's Artificial Island reactors in Salem County.
Most plants have had to resort to creative above-ground storage of the used fuel rods. Previously, they were put into "spent fuel pools," but the pools have been filled at most sites. Even this "dunk tank" solution was designed for the short term, and poses environmental and security risks. There is no way that so much radioactive material was supposed to remain on-site, often near populated areas and active waterways. For years, the federal government has failed to give a full green light to a partly built permanent storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
It's unclear what Holtec has up its sleeve in New Mexico, or exactly what an ""autonomous consolidated interim storage facility" is, but the Oyster Creek plan obviously depends on NRC approval of this "Land of Enchantment" project.
If it's environmentally secure, and can be developed without the all the political/ community opposition that stalled Yucca, Holtec will be providing an essential public service. So what if it makes piles of money leasing the space? We hope there's room for PSEG's spent fuel, as well as that from the 23 Exelon-owned reactors, mostly in the Northeast.
Other than some questions of oversight -- the state Board of Public Utilities must OK the Exelon-to-Holtec property transfer -- even the New Jersey Sierra Club is bullish on this latest development.
We are, too, and we're hoping there are no legitimate barriers to moving it forward. To see Oyster Creek cleaned up, its property on the tax rolls for another good use within our lifetimes, would be a dream come true.
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