The Fort Calhoun Station is now online at full and normal operating capacity, the Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) announced on Monday.
The plant had recently undergone routine maintenance and refueling, which forced the plant to enter an outage to protect employees and the general populace during this process. During this process, approximately one third of all of the fuel assemblies in the reactors were replaced. The announcement states that this new fuel will be in place for approximately 4.5 years.
With this outage period, the plant now has the ability to produce carbon-free electricity up to 500 million watts until the fall of 2016.
Alongside refueling activity over 9,000 improvement and repair projects were also completed which included replacing a stand for reactor vessel heads that are used in outage activity. Also a new vessel head was installed at the plant. The plant began refueling and maintenance in April.
Approximately 1,300 people were employed from within and outside of the plant in order to complete necessary repairs and refueling. The station enters shutdown every 18 months in order to refuel.
The plant is located in Blair, Nebraska, and aids the OPPD in servicing approximately 360,000 customers in 13 counties in the southeastern part of the state.
