NRC Schedules Oyster Creek Safety Assessment Webinar

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) annual assessment of safety performance at the Oyster Creek Generating Station in Lacey Township takes place two ways this year. Regulators have scheduled an April 27 webinar, followed by their traditional in-person public meeting on May 28.

The start time is 3 PM. Participants will view a slide presentation and can ask questions through the host web page.There will be a simultaneous telephone hookup as well. NRC requests registration ahead of time. Click here to access the signup page.

It's the first digital public meeting they've undertaken regarding the power plant, says NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan.

"This is a tool that we've used in other situations," Sheehan said. "We've used it to talk about decommissioning power plants, and dry cast storage of spent nuclear fuel at power plants, but not in the context of an annual assessment of a plant's performance."

Discussion will center on what NRC has determined to be the most significant issues at the plant during 2014, as well as the agency's oversight methods.

Part of the time will be devoted to electromagnetic relief valve and diesel generator malfunctions that drew NRC attention in 2014. The situations have been corrected but the agency's findings have not been finalized, Sheehan said.

Questions will be addressed following the presentation. "We'll be prepared to answer as many questions as we can, but ideally we'd like to focus on how Oyster Creek operated in 2014," Sheehan said.

NRC officials anticipate about an hour for the session. The website will remain live for the duration, for any registrant who logs on after it begins. The location of the May 28 live meeting has yet to be announced.

The generating station, the oldest commercial nuclear reactor in the US, is scheduled to begin decommissioning steps in 2019 toward closure.