White House Fights for Nuke Plants Over Towers

The Bush administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to let the nation's older power plants, including the Oyster Creek nuclear plant in Lacey, avoid installing costly cooling towers that would best protect fish and other aquatic organisms.
Lawyers for the government and electricity producers urged the justices to overturn a lower court ruling that says the Clean Water Act does not let the government pit the cost of upgrading an estimated 554 power plants against the benefits of protecting fish and other creatures when limiting water use.

Oyster Creek, like many power plants, uses surface water for cooling. Oyster Creek, for example, pulls in about 1.2 billion gallons a day from a canal that discharges into Barnegat Bay.

Environmentalists want the lower court decision upheld, an outcome that could prompt the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, under a new administration, to require existing power plants to install more costly and protective technology. All new power plants must use closed-cycle cooling - or cooling towers - which recycles water, using less from waterways to cool machinery.

In an October filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Oyster Creek owner Exelon Corp. said the cost of retrofitting with cooling towers could "negatively impact" a decision to operate the plant after the issue is resolved.

Adding cooling towers at Oyster Creek would cost up to $801 million over 10 years, according to estimates.

The bottom line is "we do not believe that cooling towers are necessary at Oyster Creek," said David Benson, an Oyster Creek spokesman.

If cooling towers are required, "we do see a potential impact on 61 of the 104 reactors that are operating around the country," said Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a policy organization for the nuclear technologies industry.

"There's the potential for considerable effect on operations and whether plants can continue operating at all in some instances," he said.

Requiring cooling towers also would lead to outages and potential impacts on electricity supplies, he said.

Oyster Creek, which began operating in 1969, is the oldest running nuclear plant in the nation.

AmerGen Energy Co., which runs the 636-megawatt Oyster Creek plant, is seeking U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval to run it for 20 years beyond next April.

Oyster Creek's 1994 water intake and discharge permit expired in 1999 but remains in effect while the state Department of Environmental Protection drafts a new permit.

The DEP, in a 2005 draft permit, said it preferred cooling towers for Oyster Creek.

Todd B. Bates: (732) 643-4237 or [email protected]