The pollution is the biological, chemical or physical alteration of the water, land, or air that is harmful to living organisms, ocean waters and surface waters. The surface waters, such as lakes, rivers, streams, and underground aquifers can get affected in different way. They can get polluted in common way including human and animal wastes, pathogenic microorganisms, pesticides, and sediment. The water pollution can happen in industrial nations by wasting toxic metals, organic chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and acids. The human activities that can contribute to pollution are constructions, drilling, dam construction, salting of roads and driveways to melt the ice, waste disposal and agriculture. Sometimes even hot water can consider as a pollutant. The effects of water pollution follow the path of the waters as they trickle through soil, filter through rock beds, and flow down streams and river system, and into oceans. The excess amount of inorganic nutrients such as nitrates and phosphates or raw sewage pollutes lakes or ponds, algae and aquatic plants overgrow. As of the aquatic plants die, they fall in the bottom of the water and the bacteria and other microorganisms decompose the remaining of them and that uses up all the dissolved oxygen in the water and suffocating the other aquatic life in the lake or pond.
The Thermal pollution is the degradation of water quality by any process that changes ambient water temperature, which is associated with increasing of water temperature in stream, lake or ocean due to the discharged of heated water from industrial processes. In addition to harming aquatic life that cannot tolerate the warmer water, the warmer temperatures lower the amount of dissolved oxygen. How the water quality changes? It changes when the water is used in manufacture industrial and power plant as a coolant, and whenever it is used and return to the natural environment, the temperature changes, because it is warmer water coming out, and it creates less oxygen supply in environment and therefore it affects the ecosystem. Whenever the power plants are open or shut off for repair, the fish and other species, adapting new temperature kills them by thermal shock. The elevated temperature decreases the dissolved oxygen in water and this would harm aquatic animals in increasing the metabolic rate of aquatic animal because of enzyme activity, this result in organisms consuming more food in shorter time and then their environment were not changed. Sometimes that would create the food chain to get disrupted and biodiversity would decrease in results of the warmer temperature. The higher water temperature can results in increasing in plant growth rates, shorter lifespan and over populations of the species, and later on it can cause an algae bloom which reduces oxygen levels. The larger temperature denatures the life supporting enzymes by breaking disulphide and hydrogen bond in enzyme's structure, which results in inability to breaking down in lipids which leads to malnutrition.
New Jersey Nuclear Power Plants History
Figure : Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station.The Oyster Creek Nuclear Generation Station (OCNGS) is oldest operating nuclear power plant in United States, which is located in Forked River in the Lacey Township, in New Jersey. This plant is spread out in 700 acres of the land and build by Burns & Roe, Inc. and owned by the company name Exelon Corporation. It is one of the four nuclear power plant unit in New Jersey. The others are 2 of them at the Salem Nuclear Power Plant, and the Hope Creek Nuclear Generating Station. The OCNGS plant was built in 1965 and started in December, 1969 with the licensed to work for 40 years, but in 2009 the license was extended for another 20 years by Nuclear Regulatory Commissions. The plant uses its cooling water from Barnegat Bay, and dumps the water into the Atlantic Ocean through the Barnegat Inlet. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued license for first 40 years on the basis of the economic and antitrust considerations, but not technical limitations (CITATION- 4). The OCNGS has a capacity of producing 619 MWe, the total power generated in 2007 was 5077 GW-h and from last 5 year average generation capacity is 5042 GW-h by using boiling water reactor (BWR). This power plant has generated 4.9 million MWh with capacity factor of 91% and served 600,000 homes as of 2009 record. "Each day the OCNGS uses 1.3 billion gallons of Barnegat Bay Water for antiquated cooling system, which is 2.2% of the total volume of bay per day and over 790% of the bay per year" (CITATION). When the plant automatically shutdowns for safety reasons, it kills fishes due to lack of warm water input to the bay. In 2002, there were 5876 fish were killed, and plant was fined $1 million, where in 2006, only 80 fish died and in 2007 another 5304 were killed, which got fined for $67859, and in 2008, 38 fish died in following a shutdown. These cooling towers would prevents these fish kills and reduce the artificially high temperatures near the plant's current discharge area back to normal. This plant has approximately 700 employees, which their payroll is around $53 million in 2003 and $63 million in 2009 also where the property tax for 2009 was $2.4 million. This plant has increased output associated with 1034 jobs in New Jersey and 915 jobs in Ocean County. This plant has sponsorship the united way of Ocean County by contributing more than $277,000 in 2009 and counted as largest employee run campaign in Ocean County.
Figure : Hope Creek Nuclear Generating Station.
Figure : Salem Nuclear Power Plant. The other three nuclear power stations are located in Lower Alloways Creek Township, New Jersey in United States. Those all three plants owned by PSEG Nuclear LLC and Exelon Generation LLC. The two of the power stations are called Salem Nuclear Power Plants, which are pressurized water reactor nuclear power station and the other one is called a Hope Creek Nuclear Generating Station, which is a thermal nuclear power plant. Those three plants share an artificial island in the Delaware Bay. The Salem Nuclear Power Plant has two units, which were started in 1977 and 1981 and those two plants has a capacity of 2275 MWe. The unit 1 is licensed to operate until August, 2016 and unit 2 is licensed to operate until April, 2020. The PSEG has also applied for 20 years more extension for both of these units licenses renewal. The technical problem made the Salem Reactors to shut down for two years in 1990s. They had found the several difficulties, including leaky generators, and unreliable controls on reactor. In 2004, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission took a look at the oversight of this plant and ordered to increase the monitoring of them. The Hope Creek Nuclear Generating Station which is thermal nuclear power plant was established in 1986, and it has license to operate the plant until April, 2026. It also has applied for 20 years extension for license renewal. This plant has producing capacity of 1059 MWe, and in 2007 it has produced 8104 GW-h, where it has average of 7528 GW-h in last 5 years of energy production.
Table : Nuclear Power Plants in New Jersey Net Generation and Capacity, 2008
Plant Name
Unit Number
Net Capacity MW
Net Generation Thousand Kwh
Capacity Factor (Percent)
Operator/ Owner
Salem
1
1,174
9,327
90
PSEG Power LLC/ Dual Ownership 1
Salem
2
1,130
8,211
83
Total
2,304
17,538
87
-
Hope Creek
1
1,061
9,992
107
PSEG Power/ PSEG Nuclear
Oyster Creek
1
619
4,664
86
Exelon Generation/ Exelon Corporation
The discarded radioactive materials from nuclear submarines and military waste have been a major source of radioactivity in the oceans, which causes fatal harm to marine life. They can also enter the food chain as some organisms like shell fish concentrate radioactivity in their bodies which are later consumed by humans. The pesticides like DDT and PCBS can enter the oceans through city waste water and industrial discharges from farms and forests. The Thermal pollution is when high or low temperature water is discharged from an industrial source. The difference in temperatures can kill corals and other sensitive marine organisms that are not developed to handle the different temperatures. The Thermal discharges of unused heat from fossil fuel or from fission in the nuclear fuel constitute another kind of environmental impact. Thermal effects in biota include problems with reproduction, growth, survival of larval forms, juveniles and adults. Regulatory agencies establish water temperature standards to govern heated discharges from the power plants to prevent catastrophic kills to occur, or thermally induced demise of aquatic populations. Fish, plankton and benthos are all affected at various degrees by thermal discharges from power plants. Other environmental impact common to all nuclear power plants are the highly visible transmission lines associated with the generation and distribution of electricity. Underground cables are not yet an economically feasible solution for most cases of transmission of electricity. Radioactive effluents released from nuclear power plants are, however, the main object of monitoring and control to minimize exposure of the public to ionizing radiation.
Affect on the Ocean mammals
The Green sea turtle is the larger sea turtle with binomial name Chelonia mydas from Cheloniidae family with only species in the genus Chelonia. It is the endangered species listed by IUCN and CITES. It is with low, broadly oval carapace and small head with one pair of pre frontal scales that are unique to them. Their shell length ranges from 36-43 inches and weights average between 200-300 pounds. They evolved more than 150 million years ago, and they spend entire lives in the sea, even more then come to the surface to breathe, and remain underwater for several hours for resting. They inhabit warm, tropical and subtropical waters, they migrate northward as temperature increase in the late spring, and stays there until late fall. Their nesting occurs in warm temperate and subtropical regions on open sandy beaches above high tide mark in front of well developed sand dunes. As of the Harold Haines and William Kleese, the scientist from the Miami, Florida, proved that the role of water temperature in the induction and maintenance of a dermal herpesvirus infection (gray-patch disease) of young, green sea turtles, which influence of other recognized stress factors was negligible. In their research the animals that were subjected to a gradual increase in water temperature from 25 to 30'C and a subsequent decrease to 25'C, where they were maintained, had a period before onset of clinical signs and severity closer to that of control animals. In their findings they indicated that both the induction of clinical gray-patch disease and the severity of the lesions are affected by water temperature and suggest that one possible means of control of this herpesvirus infection under intensive aquaculture conditions might be water temperature manipulation.
