Brunswick Nuclear Plants celebrates 40 years of operation

Duke Energy of Charlotte, North Carolina announced on Friday that its Brunswick Nuclear Power Plant will be celebrating 40 years in operation on Tuesday.

The Brunswick plant, located in Southport, N.C., houses two GE boiling reactor units with a generation capacity of 1,870 megawatts of electricity. Its first unit began operation in 1975 and the second reactor followed suit in 1977.

“We worked long hours and became a very close-knit team,” Lorenzo Johnson, one of those present when the Brunswick plant first opened, said. “And we did it because we knew we were part of something special.”

The site’s Vice President, Randy Gideon, states that there are planned investments into the plant that will facilitate increased capacity and higher reliability levels.

Duke Energy specializes in the generation and distribution of electricity and features nuclear, hydroelectric, natural gas and coal-fired generation facilities and has a capacity of 12,000 megawatts over its entire generation fleet. Duke Energy serves approximately 7.3 million electricity customers throughout the Midwest and Southeastern U.S. and approximately 1.5 million customers in South Carolina and North Carolina.

The company is actively involved in the local communities that it serves and it provides support to schools and it organizes volunteering events in the area.