Exelon Corp. announced Monday that it has taken Unit 1 at the Byron Nuclear Generating Station in Illinois offline in order to complete refueling activity.
For the refueling, the facility will be adding approximately 1,200 temporary workers in addition to its 850 permanent facility employees. During refueling, approximately 10,000 inspections and other maintenance activity takes place. The activity consists of necessary work that cannot be completed while the unit is in operation.
“We are proud of the station’s ability to supply power to air conditioners at homes and businesses through a tough summer; now we’ll focus on another efficient outage,” Byron Station Site Vice President Russ Kearney said.
While Unit 1 is offline, Unit 2 will remain operating at full capacity. Local residents should be aware that cooling tower vapor will not be produced and this is normal in this procedure.
The company said that work during this outage will ensure that the facility is able to operate through the winter and through summer of 2016.
The Byron facility has a full capacity of 2,500 megawatts of electricity when both units are operating; this is enough to power approximately 2.8 million average homes. The Byron facility is located about 25 miles southeast of Rockford, Illinois.
