US-based energy producer Exelon has announced that its LaSalle County Generating Station’s nuclear unit 2 has resumed production to its full capacity after a refueling outage of 21 days.
Unit 2 of the nuclear plant was taken offline on 11 February. The temporary shutdown of the unit marked the station’s 14 refueling outage of the unit in two years.
During the refueling outage the company performed about 11,000 activities, including extensive safety inspections and tests, along with numerous plant improvements.
Workers executed preventive maintenance activities, walkdowns, and inspections of valves, power supply systems, and replaced one-third of the reactor’s fuel to improve the plant’s operational strength and to provide clean, safe and reliable electricity for another two-year operating cycle.
The LaSalle Generating Station situated about 75 miles southwest of Chicago near Marseilles, in Illinois, US, has two power generating units – unit 1 and unit 2.
The two units at full capacity can produce over 2,200MW of electricity enough to power 2.3 million homes.