Oyster Creek drywell corrosion raises concerns
BY DANIELLE MEDINA Correspondent

TOMS RIVER - Will the thickness of the drywell liner surrounding the reactor at the Oyster Creek nuclear plant in Lacey Township last for another 20 years if the plant is relicensed?

That's the single question now before three judges from the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB), the judicial arm of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

ASLB judges E. Roy Hawkins, Paul Abramson and Anthony Baratta recently listened to expert testimony on that question during hearings at the Ocean County Administration Building.

"The burden of proof is on AmerGen the plant operator) that the challenges presented to us do not have merit," Hawkins said.

Officials from AmerGen and its parent company, Exelon Inc., brought 14 expert witnesses in an attempt to prove that the nuclear plant is safe, and placed five photographs and a small replica of the drywell shell into evidence. "There was no secret that there was corrosion in 1992, but the shell is not corroding now," Alex Polonsky, an attorney

for AmerGen, said in his opening remarks to the panel.

Polonsky said that after the corrosion was discovered, the exterior of the drywell shell was cleaned and an epoxy coating was applied.

"It is still as shiny as it was 15 years ago," he said.

Polonsky said

Polonsky said AmerGen has in place a management plan for aging, which was approved by the NRC, and that the opposition to the drywell liner is "conjecture."

"They (opponents) are saying that the rate of corrosion will be higher than it was 15 years ago," Polonsky said. "That is just baseless hypothesizing."

But Richard Webster, a Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic lawyer who represents a coalition of groups that oppose the relicensing of the Oyster Creek plant, said the sampling AmerGen has done is unusual and the numbers are small.

"There is a huge amount of uncertainty," Webster said in his opening remarks. "AmerGen is drowning in it. Don't let it drag the NRC down with it."

Webster said there is an absence of data, including the thickness of the drywell shell in certain areas, along with what the corrosion rate will be in the future.

"Will it be 0.05 inches per year?" Webster asked. "Can we think that's appropriate when we're dealing with nuclear safety?"

Webster represents a coalition of citizen and environmental groups that include the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, the Jersey Shore Nuclear Watch Inc., Grandmothers, Mothers and More for Energy Safety (GRAMMES), the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group (NJPIRG), the New Jersey Sierra Club and the New Jersey Environmental Foundation.

New Jersey congressmen Jim Saxton and Christopher Smith both questioned the thickness of the drywell shell and urged the panel to investigate the issue thoroughly in a Sept. 21 letter addressed to the ASLB.

"It is not acceptable for the containment wall of a 636-megawatt nuclear power plant to just barely meet minimum federal requirements or to fall below the margin of safety," they wrote.

Saxton and Smith referred to testimony before the ASLB by Dr. Mark Hartzman, a senior mechanical engineer in the Division of Engineering- Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation at the NRC, who indicated that the steel drywell barrier did not meet the minimum thickness requirements set by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

The NRC said in an Aug. 23 letter to the ASLB that Hartzman's testimony contained a "misstatement" and that Hartzman had later corrected the NRC's rebuttal testimony.

Oyster Creek, which went online in 1969, is the oldest nuclear plant in the United States. Its 40-year operating license is due to expire on April 9, 2009. AmerGen applied to the NRC for a 20-year license extension in July 2005.

AmerGen has faced a series of setbacks this year in its quest to have the plant on Route 9 south in Lacey Township relicensed. The state Attorney General's Office petitioned the federal 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in May to contest the NRC's stance that the impact of a terrorist attack should not be part of a nuclear plant's relicensing review. The Attorney General's Office filed the petition on behalf of the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

And in early June, the DEP faulted both AmerGen and the NRC for relying on environmental studies that were up to 30 years old during the relicensing process.