Residents in the area around a shuttered nuclear plant in southern New Jersey were in the dark for around two hours early this week after a construction accident caused a power outage, said the company in charge of decommissioning the site.
A contractor working for Holtec International backed into a utility pole while moving equipment at Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station around 2 P.M. Monday, a spokesperson for the Camden, N.J.-based nuclear services company told RadWaste Monitor via email Tuesday morning. The resulting power outage lasted around two hours, the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for FirstEnergy-owned Jersey Central Power & Light said via email Tuesday that around 31,000 customers were affected by the outage in townships across southern New Jersey. Roughly 23,000 customers had their lights back on by 3 P.M. Tuesday, and the situation at Oyster Creek was mostly resolved by 6 P.M., the spokesperson said.
This isn’t the first decommissioning-related accident at the Forked River, N.J. nuclear plant, which Holtec purchased from Exelon in 2019. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in May that the company violated federal safety regulations in its reporting of a February mishap during which a faulty valve system blew off a spent fuel storage canister, causing a nearby worker to be doused with contaminated water.
Holtec, which recently finished moving Oyster Creek’s 33-canister spent fuel inventory to onsite dry storage, has said it expects decommissioning of the site to wrap up by 2025. The company said in a May 21 press release that the plant had been defueled in record time.
