Lacey Township officials are in the beginning stages of preparing for an economic future without the Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant. Deputy Mayor Dave Most, a longtime Oyster Creek worker, says he believes it’s an opportunity for Lacey Township to get in on the cutting edge of the energy generation future.

Oyster Creek Nuclear Plant (Exelon)
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Most says, “when a baseload plant like that goes down, you have to plug in another baseload plant, either you have oil, you have coal, you have natural gas or you have nuclear.” When talking about baseload, the Lacey official is referring to the infrastructure that’s already in place to send energy to the power grid from Oyster Creek. Most says behind Oyster Creek is a whole substation that’s capable of delivering 800 megawatts of energy.

 

 

COVERTED INTO A NATURAL GAS FACILITY?

Most says they’ve been having preliminary discussions with the Christie Administration and so far converting the site into a natural gas facility is looking more and more appealing. When talking about the Christie Administration he says “I would probably say they’re going to key on utilizing natural gas, espcially with the master energy plan that the Governor has basically put out there as far as building more natural gas transmission through New Jersey.”

When asking about building a solar or wind farm instead, Most says those renewable energy sources are good but not as reliable as baseload sources such as oil, coal, natural gas or nuclear. However, he says the renewable sources would be a nice additional compliment to the site.

Most says right now they have to come up with a conceptual plan for the Oyster Creek site and have some logistics worked out. “You know, if we’re going to do a natural gas plant we have to think about transmission running gas lines and different things as far as the impact it’s going to have to the environment and talk to local officials and communities.”

 

 

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