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It takes months of planning and years of post-closing work to dismantle, clean, ship and/or store everything from the components of the reactor itself to the tubes that hold the spent, highly radioactive fuel.
Some of that work is under way at the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station, the outdated 30-year-old nuclear power plant in Ocean County that -- barring a last-minute sale -- will cease operations next year.
Oyster Creek officials briefed U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulators yesterday on plans for the closing. In a two-hour meeting here, they reviewed timetables for regulatory filings and discussed variables that could affect them.
GPU Inc. officials said they were following a two-track approach, planning for the closing while at the same time wooing potential buyers who would continue operating the plant until 2009.
Exasperated by the high cost of producing electricity at the plant, Parsippany-based GPU Inc. decided nearly two years ago to give up the ship. But it has been unsuccessful in finding a buyer willing to pay the $700 million asking price, so GPU is gearing up to close the 619-megawatt plant along U.S. Route 9.
"It's not just turning out the lights and bringing in the wrecking ball. It's a slow, methodical process," said Suzanne D'Ambrosio, a plant spokeswoman.
So was yesterday's meeting. GPU officials outlined their plans for submitting mandatory updates about spent fuel, security plans, damage insurance and a handful of other issues that must be addressed before the plant ceases producing.
Regulators, meanwhile, described their procedures for handling the shutdown. Mainly, the NRC wants to be certain Oyster Creek's owners make adequate provisions for storing the radioactive spent fuel once the site is abandoned, according to NRC officials.
The federal government was ordered by Congress to establish a permanent repository for high-level nuclear waste in the early 1980s but has yet to do so. As a result, Oyster Creek's waste will have to be stored on site until a permanent location is found elsewhere and the 2,800 fuel assemblies containing radioactive uranium fuel pellets are moved there. Less contaminated items, such as reactor equipment, will be dismantled and shipped away for permanent storage in low-level radioactive waste disposal facilities.
The reactor vessel, meanwhile, will likely be taken apart and shipped by barge to a disposal facility in Barnwell, S.C., according to officials.
Still at issue is how long Oyster Creek must maintain its on-site emergency preparedness operation, a 24-hour crew that responds to serious problems. GPU wants to do so until three months after the shutdown; NRC officials say other plants that were decommissioned kept emergency preparedness crews on alert for up to three years.
The plant's 720 employees will be phased out gradually, with up to 400 remaining through some parts of decommissioning, D'Ambrosio said.
Lacey Township, the sleepy Ocean County community that began booming once the plant was built in 1969, is planning for the closing.
The township, which gets about $11 million annually from GPU for being a "host community," would see that money replaced by revenue from a state energy tax paid by GPU and other power companies, according to Jorge Rod, township administrator. As a result, no tax increases are expected once the plant closes, he said, but local businesses that enjoy the economic impact of 300 employee-residents and of overall plant spending will be hurt.