Wolf Creek could be restarted next week
BURLINGTON — The refueling process at Wolf Creek Nuclear power plant in Burlington is behind schedule, but could be completed in about a week.
Jenny Hageman, communications specialist for Wolf Creek, said Monday morning that the plant is about to head in the direction of a restart. It was shut down on March 17 to refuel, a process that is done every 18 months. The refueling process is scheduled to take 35 days, but unforeseen maintenance requirements this year have extended the outage.
According to a report last month from Reuters, a possible problem was found with the reactor’s containment coolers. That may have contributed to the delay in completing refueling.
During refueling, the fuel assemblies are taken out of the nuclear reactor and a third of the fuel rods are replaced with new fuel rods. Other maintenance is performed while the plant is shut down.
“Most of those cannot be done while the plant is operating,” Hageman said. “There are thousands and thousands of activities.”
It takes about 1,000 extra people to help with the refueling process, Hageman said.
“We double our workforce and that’s a benefit to our local economy,” she said. “We appreciate all the people who come in and help us with our outages. We couldn’t do it without them.”
Hageman said Wolf Creek will release a statement when it begins generating power again.
According to a news release, Wolf Creek’s owners — Westar Energy, Kansas Electric Power Cooperative and Kansas City Power and Light Co. — have been using other generating plants they own and buying electrical power from other utilities while Wolf Creek has been shut down.
under_score (anonymous) says...
Here's an idea. Why not ask the WC representative what caused the delay while you were speaking to her rather than quoting a separate new source?
May 6, 2008 at 2:42 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )