Shutdown of nuke plant has a surprising stinging consequence
STAFFORD TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) — The shutdown of one of the nation's oldest nuclear power plants last year is having a surprising, stinging consequence for a New Jersey bay considered one of the nation's most fragile.
The environmental group Save Barnegat Bay held a conference Wednesday where scientists noted the increase of tiny jellyfish near the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant.
The stinging sea nettles that had been sucked into the plant and killed by heated water are now thriving and multiplying.
The influx has some worrying about swimming conditions in the area, while other say the plant closure should begin to restore conditions to where they were before the plant became operational in 1969.
"This is one of the unintended consequences" of the plant's shutdown, said Paul Bologna, a professor at Montclair State University known for his research on jellyfish. "There are huge numbers of them out there now, substantially more than we had been seeing in 2018."
Bologna and others presented their findings at a three-day conference on Barnegat Bay organized by the environmental group.
"When I was a kid, we played in the bay all day long, so long that our skin was all pruned up," said Britta Wenzel, Save Barnegat Bay's executive director. "My kids had their first swimming experiences in the bay, and in a lot of places, you can't do that anymore."
The nuclear plant, which closed in Sept. 2018, had been altering conditions in the bay for decades, discharging water that was 10 degrees hotter than normal.
Joe Bilinski, research scientist with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said the immediate effect of the plant shutdown is the beginning of a return to conditions in the bay that existed before the plant went online.
"Conditions are going back to what...