Nuclear

Nine Mile Point nuclear unit 2 begins 17th refueling in 32 year history

Operators at Exelon Corp’s Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station in upstate New York have taken Unit 2’s generator out of service to begin its refueling outage.

The project is Nine Mile Point Unit 2’s 17th planned refueling outage since it began operation in 1988, according to reports. Exelon says Unit 2 generated more than 20.65 million MWh of carbon-free electricity since the last outage.

More than 1,300 workers will travel to the power plant near Oswego, New York, to work on upgrades, maintenance and other improvements to have it running safely and efficiently for another two-year fueling cycle, Exelon officials said.

“A refueling outage gives us the opportunity to perform important maintenance and updates that ensure Nine Mile Point will safely and reliably provide carbon-free energy to our customers so that when temperatures dip like they did this winter, or soar like they will this summer, residents’ energy needs are met,” said Site Vice President Peter Orphanos. “As always, we will complete our outage tasks with an unwavering commitment to safety and environmental stewardship.” 

Nine Mile Point Unit’ 2’s last planned refueling and maintenance outage began April 16, 2018 and ended a month later.

Exelon’s nuclear fleet generates more than 18,700 MW capacity from 21 reactors at 12 facilities. Those plants are in Illinois, Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania.

Nine Mile Point’s two reactor units have generation capacity of more than 2 GW. Unit 1 was commissioned in 1969 and is the nation’s oldest commercial power reactor.

Both units utilize GE boiling water reactors.

(Rod Walton is content director for Power Engineering and POWERGEN International. He can be reached at 918-831-9177 and [email protected]).

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Commercial nuclear energy will be part of the Lowering Carbon with Thermal Generation track in the POWERGEN International conference workshops. POWERGEN 2020 is happening December 8-10 in Orlando, Florida.

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