Oyster Creek gets pass on new requirement

LACEY - An anti-nuclear power group says public health is at risk due to Oyster Creek Generating Station’s recent exclusion from rules that require similar nuclear facilities to install new vents that would prevent explosions.

The new vents — which were ordered in 2013 to be installed at plants with designs like Oyster Creek’s — will help prevent an explosion from the buildup of pressure and hydrogen gas in the rare case of a meltdown.

But Exelon, which operates the Lacey-based plant, received an exemption in a Nov. 16 letter from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Originally Exelon, which operates the Oyster Creek power plant, had until fall 2016 to install the first phase of the new venting system and until fall 2018 to install the second phase. Under the exemption, Exelon will not have to add the first phase vents.

“They’re just whistling past this risk that they don’t have a handle on,” said Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project of the anti-nuclear group Beyond Nuclear.

Beyond Nuclear criticized the commission’s exemption and described it as a “pass to avoid an essential safety retrofit that the federal agency itself had ordered” on the country’s oldest nuclear reactor.

Nuclear regulators and plant officials say the Oyster Creek power plant already has systems in place that would prevent explosions.

The facility already has a vent system, which was installed in 1993, Oyster Creek spokeswoman Suzanne D’Ambrosio wrote in an email Wednesday.

“Oyster Creek’s hardened vent system ... is fully operational and capable of protecting the plant, our workers and the public in the unlikely event of a severe event,” she wrote.

How Fukushima’s meltdown changed the rules

The requirement to install the new vents was in reaction to the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station crisis, where an earthquake and tsunami triggered a power outage that resulted in hydrogen explosions and meltdowns in three of the Japanese plant’s six reactors.

When the tsunami flooded the station’s generators, the power outage shutdown cooling systems in its older reactors. With the cooling systems off, fuel overheated and the hot zirconium tubes surrounding the fuel reacted with steam and created highly explosive hydrogen gas.

Before the mounting pressure was released through the plant’s vents, chambers around some of the older reactors exploded and released radioactive material into the air, according to the World Nuclear Association, an organization that promotes nuclear energy and represents nuclear power companies worldwide. Though estimates vary, between 80,000 and more than 100,000 people were evacuated from the region as a result.

Since Oyster Creek and Fukushima Dai-ichi have nearly identical reactor designs, Gunter, of Beyond Nuclear, believes the same catastrophe could happen here.

“The vulnerability is now demonstrated,” he said. “This is no longer supposition or a calculated risk. If there is an event, the probability is almost certain that if that final barrier is challenged, by design, it will fail. The fact that the operator (Exelon) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have backed off this lesson, it’s a really deep concern.”

Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulator Commission, said that is not the case. The commission exempted the power plant from installing new vents in its wet well, citing Exelon’s plan to use a compressed gas line to control the existing vent valves during a power outage.

The plant’s impending closure in December 2019 also was a factor in the decision, Sheehan said.

“We are currently enhancing the system to allow remote venting without electrical power, a primary lesson learned from the events at Fukushima,” wrote D’Ambrosio, the plant’s spokeswoman. “Due to Oyster Creek’s planned shutdown in 2019, additional hardened vent upgrades are neither practical nor necessary to ensure safe plant operation.”

Though the new vents are designed with sturdier piping, Sheehan said Fukushima’s explosions were not the result of vent failure, but rather the too-late decision to open the valves.

So far Exelon has not been excused from the second phase of its obligation, to vent the power plant’s dry well. At this time, the dry well is not vented, Sheehan said.

“Oyster Creek is in a unique set of circumstances,” he said. “We believe that it (the plant’s systems enhancements) will not lead to any sort of increased risk, that they would still be able to cope with a severe accident.”

Amanda Oglesby: 732-557-5701; aoglesby@GannettNJ.com