Unit 1 of the Cook nuclear power plant in Bridgman will be taken offline at 3 a.m. this Saturday to begin its 32nd refueling outage.
Cook plant spokesperson Joe Callahan tells us each of the plant’s two reactors has to be shut down every 18 months for refueling. During that time, crews also perform a variety of maintenance jobs that can’t be done when the reactor is fully powered up. So, what are some of the things they’ll be up to this time?
“One of the large tasks that we’ll be performing during this outage, and we usually do them at nearly every outage we have, is the replacement of the motor on our reactor cooling pumps,” Callahan said. “So the reactor cooling pump is a critical part, a critical component, and it’s responsible for circulating the primary coolant through the reactor core.”
Callahan says the refueling outages require extra staff that come in, often from out of town, to perform these tasks during the few months the reactor is offline.
“They’ve been on site for quite a while now, so we have about a thousand or so additional contract workers here on site at Cook that are assisting our regular plant staff with this refueling outage.”
Other jobs to be done during this refueling outage include inspection and maintenance activities related to the main turbine and generator and replacing important battery systems.
During the outage, around 12,500 maintenance, inspection, and equipment modification jobs totaling 179,000 workhours are scheduled for two daily 12-hour work shifts. Callahan says Unit 2 will remain at full power throughout the outage and will meet the grid’s needs.
For competitive reasons, Cook can’t release exactly when the refueling outage will end.
