Oldest US Nuclear Reactor: a ‘Disaster’ in Waiting?

The Oyster Creek nuclear plant in New Jersey uses a GE Mark I Boiling Water reactor identical to those that lost power at Japan's Fukushima plant. The reactor has been plagued with problems including a corroding liner in the carbon steel containment unit, and leaks that allow radioactive tritium to seep into drinking water. In addition, there are huge volumes of stocked spent fuel rods on site - two-and-a-half to three times more than in Japan.

A sleepy New Jersey town has popped onto people's radar screens because it has the oldest running nuclear power plant in the United States - and, some say, the most dangerous. ...

It uses a GE Mark I Boiling Water reactor identical to those that lost power at Japan's Fukushima plant...

US anti-nuclear activists and many residents of Lacey and surrounding Jersey shore townships worry that a similar nuclear disaster could happen at Oyster Creek, and it wouldn't need an earthquake or tsunami to trigger it.

Oyster Creek has been dogged by problems including a corroding liner in the carbon steel containment unit; leaks that allow radioactive tritium to seep into drinking water; and huge volumes of stocked spent fuel rods.

"We have 40 years of radiation on site - two-and-a-half to three times more than in Japan," anti-nuclear activist Jeff Brown told AFP.

Most information about radiation exposure focuses on high-dose exposure and acute radiation sickness. It's horrific, granted, but other short, intermediate and long term effects can be even more heinous - partly because they sneak up on you.

Did you know? Contaminated kids in Iraq are being "born with two heads, one eye in the middle of the face, missing limbs, too many limbs, brain damage, cardiac defects, abnormally large heads, eyeless, missing genitalia, riddled with tumors."

The USA has such "pockets" too - and here, like in Iraq, the legal system overrides epidemiology and medical research, demanding proof of single, direct cause-and-effect. But the world is complex, so is disease, and because there always are multiple elements and factors in play, nobody has to take responsibility.

Cancer, immune system disorders and diseases, and other chronic diseases associated with radiation exposure, generally take 10-20 years to show up. But it's still the radiation that tipped the balance.