The nation's oldest operating nuclear plant has been temporarily shut down due to a fault in the turbine control system.
But officials with the Oyster Creek plant say it won't have any impact on the electrical service it provides.
An Exelon employee walks past equipment in the turbine building at the Oyster Creek nuclear plant in Lacey Township, N.J. Called "Oyster Creak" by some critics because of its aging problems, this boiling water reactor began running in 1969 and ranks as the country's oldest operating commercial nuclear power plant. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)The plant automatically shut down without incident at 3:42 a.m. Sunday when the fault was detected. The turbine control system is located on the plant's non-nuclear side, and technicians were working to repair and test it before the system was returned to service.
Oyster Creek is located about 60 miles east of Philadelphia. It generates enough electricity to power 600,000 homes, or roughly all the homes in Monmouth and Ocean counties combined.
The plant's operators have said it will close in 2019. The final refueling outage is planned for 2018.