FirstEnergy Corp. said its Perry Nuclear Power Plant will shut down at midnight today for scheduled refueling, maintenance and a turbine upgrade to improve efficiency and reliability.
While the unit is off line, 280 of the 748 fuel assemblies will be replaced, and numerous safety inspections will be conducted on the unit’s reactor vessel, turbine and electrical generator. In addition, preventive maintenance will be performed on major components, including testing more than 160 valves, replacing several control rod blades and inspecting and cleaning cooling tower piping.
During the outage, Perry’s three low pressure turbines also will be replaced. The new, approximately 175-ton turbine rotors feature an enhanced blade design that is expected to improve plant safety, reliability and efficiency.
More than 1,000 temporary contractors and FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. employees from the company’s other nuclear plants will supplement the Perry work force during the outage.
FirstEnergy said the 1,268-megawatt Perry unit operated safely and reliably since the completion of its last refueling in the spring of 2011, generating more than 17.9 million megawatt hours of carbon- free electricity.
