Oyster Creek nuke plant back online

LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. - The nation's oldest operating nuclear plant is back online following a five-day outage for maintenance work.

Exelon Corp., which operates the plant, said the Oyster Creek nuclear station in Lacey Township, Ocean County, was returned to service at 3:52 a.m. today after crews completed work on one of the unit's five recirculation pumps. The pumps move water through the reactor during power operations.

The plant was manually shut down by operators on Monday. It produces 636 megawatts of electricity per hour, enough to power approximately 600,000 homes.    -AP