Outages are extremely complex and intricate and require every person involved to rise to the challenge,” said Brian O’Grady
- By Linton Levy -
Employees at Cooper Nuclear Station, owned by Nebraska Public Power District, completed the station’s 25th refueling outage. The station, located in the southeast corner of Nebraska near the community of Brownville, synchronized with the grid at 10:40 a.m. on Nov. 6, 2009. Plans are for the plant to be at 100 percent power on Nov. 7, after completing various testing procedures required as part of start up.
“Outages are extremely complex and intricate and require every person involved to rise to the challenge,” said Brian O’Grady, Cooper Nuclear Station site vice president. “I want to extend my sincere thanks to everyone for the role they played, including the families at home who supported the station staff.”
The refueling outage lasted 41 days, and many significant tasks were completed that will result in more reliable power generation in the future. In addition to replacing 128 fuel rods in the reactor vessel, some of the maintenance activities accomplished during the CNS outage were:
• Replaced four, massive feedwater heaters and overhauled a fifth. The ten-unit system heats water before going into the reactor pressure vessel. Eight of the ten heaters have been replaced in the last few years.
• Replaced the turbine control system.
• Inspected and overhauled the high-pressure turbine.
• Overhauled the condensate booster pump and condensate pump.
• Replaced one of two reactor water recirculation motor generators.
• Replaced reactor protection system transfer switches.
• Updated critical switchgear and safety-related power supplies.
• Cleaned the service-water intake and discharge canal that allow use of Missouri River water to cool the reactor.
The plant leveraged the talents and expertise of employees from NPPD’s other operational facilities, including Entergy’s nuclear power plant fleet, Utilities Service Alliance colleagues and more than 700 specialized supplemental workers.
“I am pleased with the work completed during this outage. It helps assure that Cooper can continue to safely and reliably generate electricity to meet the needs of our customers,” said NPPD President and CEO Ron Asche. “Cooper provides approximately 23 percent of NPPD’s energy supply and is a valuable, carbon-free generating resource for this state.”
CNS first came on line in 1974.
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