Feb. 15--Can the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant afford to install costly cooling towers, or would the plant close to avoid the expense?

State environmental officials want towers to be built to preserve aquatic life from Barnegat Bay, but the plant's operator, AmerGen Energy Co., said they are costly and unneeded.

At a state Department of Environmental Protection public hearing in October, Oyster Creek technician Dave Most said he believed AmerGen will close the site if the state requires cooling towers. "It's not viable as a business case," he said.

Most is a newly elected township committeeman in Lacey, where the plant is located.

In a 2004 meeting with DEP officials, managers with Exelon, which owns AmerGen, said cooling towers, if required, "would cost $25 million to install and would result in Oyster Creek no longer being financially viable," according to the DEP.

A recent AmerGen estimate pegged the cost of building cooling towers at $92.4 million, in 2002 dollars, according to a company document. It said the cost of the towers will far outweigh the benefits.

Asked if that cost would make the plant unprofitable, Exelon nuclear communications manager Peter C. Resler said: "That's proprietary information whether or not we would continue to operate the plant."

At issue is a draft DEP water intake and discharge permit for Oyster Creek. The DEP prefers that the plant install towers and cut back on 95 percent of the water it draws from Barnegat Bay. But AmerGen officials don't think towers are needed and say they would actually have a greater environmental impact because they would release salt into the air.

A nuclear plant with cooling towers releases exhaust heat from its reactor to the air -- mainly by evaporating water -- instead of releasing heated water into a body of water, such as Barnegat Bay.

Under the Beach Boulevard bridge spanning the South Branch of the Forked River, water flows west all day in evident defiance of nature and tides.

Oyster Creek, which began operating in 1969, withdraws about 1.3 billion gallons of water a day from an intake canal linked to the South Branch for cooling, according to a DEP fact sheet.

The water intake and discharge system kills millions of small fish, shrimp and other aquatic species each year, according to estimates cited by the DEP.

According to AmerGen, previous studies "suggest that Oyster Creek Generating Station very likely achieves, or nearly achieves," national standards for reducing losses of aquatic life trapped against plant intake screens or entering the plant's cooling water system.

"Our concern about the (current) cooling system is simply that it kills too many fish," said Bradley M. Campbell, who was DEP commissioner until he left office Jan. 17. "And it's not a concern limited only to this plant. It's not a concern limited to New Jersey. This has been a long-standing concern.

"In a state where our recreational and commercial fisheries are worth billions to our economy, we can't afford to put a fisheries resource at risk from excessive fish kills caused by these structures," he said.

The DEP also has given AmerGen the option of upgrading its current system and restoring wetlands. But New Jersey and five other Northeast states have asked a federal appeals court to toss out part of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulation allowing power plants to restore wetlands in lieu of installing cooling towers.

"I take a skeptical view as to the extent to which mitigation (wetlands restoration) can offset fish kills associated with cooling structures, but it may be that AmerGen or other applicants will be able to make their case on that issue as the record's developed," Campbell said.

In the early 1990s, the DEP backed off from demanding that Public Service Electric & Gas Co. build cooling towers to replace the once- through cooling system at its Salem 1 and 2 nuclear reactors on Delaware Bay. A once-through system uses water once and then discharges it into a water body.

Instead, the company was allowed to embark on open space preservation and wetlands restoration projects that are still criticized by environmental activists.

"Nine-tenths of the environmental groups never supported mitigation in place of best available technology at Salem," said Jane Nogaki of the New Jersey Environmental Federation. Nor would they support it at Oyster Creek, she added.

"The plant's once-through cooling is continually killing fish," Nogaki said. "Mitigation can be used to make up for the past, but it can't be used as a bank for future losses."

"We got some nice bird habitat out of the deal" on Delaware Bay, said Thomas P. Fote, legislative director for the Jersey Coast Anglers Association. "I don't think it did much for the fish."

By Todd B. Bates and Kirk Moore. This story includes material from previous Press stories and the Associated Press.