COFFEY COUNTY — Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation’s staff of nearly 1,000 people has swollen to almost 2,000 people during its scheduled refueling and maintenance outage, and the plant took the opportunity to give Kansas media an inside look into its operations and its history.
The plant, northeast of Burlington, schedules an outage to refuel and perform maintenance tasks every 18 months. Wolf Creek management invited Kansas media to learn about and tour the complex. A handful of media showed up, including The Emporia Gazette.
Wolf Creek does not produce power during scheduled outages, but Wednesday it was a flurry of activity. During outages, the plant refuels, replacing fuel rods and doing maintenance on equipment that must be worked on during an outage. One third of the fuel assemblies are replaced in the reactor during outages.
During a presentation, Jenny Hageman, corporate communication staff specialist, offered information about the plant including safety information. There are multiple protections in place to protect the core during an unlikely accident. Safety measures are taken to make sure the fuel in the core stays cool and protected in case of an accident. The core is kept cool through lake water outside the plant. The lake, Coffey County Lake, is 5,090 acres and was created to support the plant. In case of power outages, there are several safety measures in place to ensure the pump can get power and get water to the plant’s core. Safety measures include battery back-up, emergency generators and steam-driven pumps in the case of a total power outage.
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