Pennsylvania’s Beaver Valley Power Station Unit 1 in Shippingport, Pennsylvania returned to service on Sunday morning after a scheduled shutdown on April 25 for maintenance and refueling.
The station is operated by a FirstEnergy Corp. subsidiary, FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC). It had generated more than 11 million megawatt hours of electricity since it was last refueled in November 2013. The most recent maintenance was preceded by safe and reliable operation, and the plant was expected to return to full power by the end of the day.
This year’s safety measures included multiple inspections and preventative maintenance as well as several improvement projects. The refueling entailed the exchange of 61 of the plant’s 157 fuel assemblies. To complete the necessary work in the month that the station was shut down, FENOC brought in a temporary workforce of more than 1,000 people, including contractors, its own employees and employees of First Energy.
In addition to the 939-megawatt unit in Shippingport, FENOC also operates nuclear power plants in Perry and Oak Harbor, Ohio.
