Alongside the 1,100-acre plot of the Perry Nuclear Power Plant, small black shells with yellow dots are often found slowly making their way through the land.
On Lake Erie's south-central shore, where brown water and a mud of wetland exist, a new resident has shelled up.This event comes up as a little surprise, as Ohio has lost about 90% of the wetlands it had two centuries ago.
In July 2025, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved another 20 years of operation for Perry, extending the plant’s license through November 7, 2046.
The surrounding property was assembled for industrial and regulatory reasons, but for a slow-growing turtle, it may provide space and time.A sudden refugePerry is a 1,268 megawatt boiling-water reactor about 40 miles northeast of Cleveland.
Vistra says more than 850 acres of forest and marsh on the property are preserved as part of a certified Urban Wildlife Sanctuary, which was certified in 1993.Nuclear siting rules require an exclusion area where the licensee can control activities, but they do not require every wooded acre on a plant site to remain wild.
