3366525

Cook Unit 1 Refueling is Complete

3366525

You might find a little more elbow room at your favorite local diner, or easier access to close-in parking at the local grocery store now that the latest refueling outage at Indiana Michigan Power Company's Cook Nuclear Plant has been completed. The 36 and a quarter day outage is complete and Cook's Unit 1 reactor has been placed back in service and once again connected to the transmission grid.

The refueling task, which took Unit 1 off the grid for the duration, ran 36 days and six hours. In addition to refueling the reactor at the Bridgman plant along Lake Michigan, and the performance of regular maintenance and testing work, this particular outage also included several large component replacements that were part of the plant's Life Cycle Management project. 

The reason you may find easier parking or more elbow room over breakfast is that the 1,500 contracted workers now move onto their next project elsewhere in the nation. Those additional 1,500 workers supplemented the regular plant staff of 1,200 people during the outage. 

Joel Gebbie is American Electric Power Company's Chief Nuclear Officer & Senior Vice President. He voice appreciation for "all the support of the local and regional craft workers on these Life Cycle Management upgrades that support the extended operation of the Cook Plant." He adds, "The major component replacements are just part of our reliability improvements and increased safety margins that will benefit the plant for decades to come."

ADVERTISEMENT
Your content continues below

One of the Life Cycle Management projects during this refueling outage was the replacement of two 60-ton feedwater heaters that pre-heat water before it enters the steam generators. A 40-ton safety-related heat exchange was also replaced. Other modifications enhance the reliability of plant emergency electrical systems and decreased the wear on the steam generator tubes. More 13,500 maintenance, inspection and equipment modification job activities totaling nearly 300,000 work-hours were completed during the outage period. 

In 2005, Cook received license renewals from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission allowing both Units 1 & 2 to run to 2034 and 2037 respectively. That is an additional 20 years beyond their original licenses.

At full capacity, the 1,030-net MW Unit 1 and 1,077-new MW Unit 2 combined produce enough electricity for more than one and a half million average homes in America. 

Indiana Michigan Power is a wholly owned subsidiary of American Electric Power. 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

*