LACEY – It was a bad combination: one Planning Board meeting, split into two locations in the same building, and a controversial topic. Throw in the size limitations for public gatherings and it meant that a meeting had to be postponed.
During that Aug. 10 session, more than 50 people came out to two sections of the municipal building to ensure that proper social distancing were in place (per the governor’s restrictions). However, some present said they couldn’t hear what was going on in the lower floor meeting room. The meeting was ultimately postponed until Aug. 24.
The subject that brought so many residents out was a hearing concerning nuclear waste storage at the former site of the Oyster Creek Generating Station which started operating in 1969.
Attendees raised the question of whether the Planning Board was violating the Open Public Meetings Act in their effort to hold the live hearing where police turned some attendees away when the two meeting rooms had reached capacity.
Gov. Phil Murphy cut the limit for indoor gatherings by 75, going from 100 to 25 for events like funerals, memorial services, parties and weddings as well as governmental functions like council meetings. This has impacted several local towns. Manchester Township, for example, had returned to in-person meetings late in July but then had to switch back to a Zoom format during their Aug. 10 council meeting.
It wasn’t just Lacey residents who filled seats in the two locations but employees of Holtec International as well. Holtec holds the contract to perform decommissioning work for the defunct power plant.
The Holtec workers and citizens joined professionals, lawyers, engineers and Planning Board members and their staff at the meeting.
Only three members of the public could be part of the main meeting room area prior to it hitting the 26-number mark and that necessitated using space on the lower floor of the municipal building where seats had to be spaced out to meet the six feet distance requirement.
The meeting was livestreamed on a large screen television but once both areas reached the 50 number limit others had to be turned away.
The Township and Holtec have had a rocky relationship almost since the start of the operation to deconstruct what was the oldest operating nuclear facility in the country. The plant is storing nuclear waste from its decades of use.
Holtec claims that material will be safely contained and managed but members of the governing body along with residents and environmental groups have called for the company to provide more transparency concerning its operations and future plans.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission oversees the decommissioning operation and Holtec has stated that it is meeting all of that agency’s regulations. It was set to make a presentation of its latest waste storage project during the aborted meeting.
During the meeting a resident yelled out that Holtec needed to “put it in writing” in reference to whether Holtec would be receiving spent nuclear fuel rods from other nuclear facilities and if Oyster Creek would become a type of area depository. Some residents wanted assurance that this is not going to happen.
The concrete casks of nuclear material have been in storage for many years and include the spent nuclear fuel rods that were removed from the nuclear reactor allowing them to cool off for a long period of time in the facility’s cooling pool.
Before the pool can be drained and for the firm to complete the decommissioning process, each of the remaining fuel rods in the pool must be removed to storage casks and put beside the plant’s previously removed spent fuel casks.
As there is no national location to send the waste material to it has built up at nuclear facilities throughout the country. Holtec wants to construct such a storage area in New Mexico and has applied to the federal government to do so but their application is still awaiting approval.
For the present however, residents want to know how Holtec is going to handle the job in Lacey, wanting to know the timeline and urging transparency.
