O&M

Entergy reconnects 975-MW Louisiana nuclear station to grid after O&M outage

Entergy reconnects 975-MW Louisiana nuclear station to grid after O&M outage
(Photo courtesy Entergy)

By Rod Walton, Power Engineering and POWERGEN+ Content Director

The 975-MW River Bend Station nuclear power plant is back in service after its refueling and maintenance outage was completed.

The 35-year-old reactor unit in St. Francisville, Louisiana, was taken offline so thousands of tasks, upgrades and inspections could be performed by Entergy’s on-site crew of nearly 900 workers and also outside contractors.

“I am proud of the site’s performance during our 21st refueling outage,” said Steve Bibb, River Bend outage manager. “The team executed our plan successfully, allowing us to operate another cycle and provide safe, clean and reliable power to our customers.”

Entergy celebrated River Bend Station’s 34th year of carbon-free power generation last summer. It produces 10 percent of the total energy demand in Louisiana, according to the utility.

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Refueling is necessary at nuclear power plants about once every 18 to 24 months. These scheduled outages used to take months but now can be completed in a month or less.

Refueling outages begin when plant operators take the unit offline, and the work begins, Entergy noted. The team replaces a third of the fuel in the reactor, shuffles current fuel rods and replaces the removed fuel with new fuel.

The new fuel will operate in the reactor for three cycles. A cycle refers to the time between outages. The used fuel that is removed is considered spent fuel and moved to the spent fuel pool where it is stored and then is moved to a concrete dry storage cask.

River Bend Station’s single reactor unit was commissioned in June 1986, nine years after construction began. It is powered by a sixth generation General Electric boiling water reactor and boasts annual net generation output of about 7,100 GWh, according to reports.

Its capacity factor–the percentage of its capacity which the unit actually produces–is close to 82 percent. Nuclear power plants typically perform at the high end of the capacity factor range anywhere between 80 and 100 percent, while other carbon-free resources such as wind, solar and hydro typically produce about half of capacity or less, according to reports.

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Nuclear power currently makes up about 20 percent of the U.S. generation resource mix, second only to gas-fired power. New Orleans-based Entergy owns and operates a national fleet of eight reactors generating about 8,000 MW at capacity.