The next refueling outage for Unit 1 of the Cook nuclear power plant in Bridgman gets started at 3 a.m. on Saturday. Cook plant spokesperson Bill Downey tells WSJM News they’ll take the unit offline not only to be refueled, but also for a variety of maintenance projects. Cook brings in extra, contracted workers to get everything done.
“We’ve got about 1,200 extra employees or so coming in to supplement our workforce, and that’s roughly average for what we do,” Downey said. “We’ve paid particular attention to safety over the last several outages and we’ve been able to keep our workers safe with no OSHA recordables through the last several outages, and we certainly plan to do that again.”
The outage will include an inspection of the high pressure turbine, inspection and maintenance of the unit’s steam generators, an upgrade to a safety-related control system, seal replacement on all three of the unit’s main condensers, and a digital control upgrade to the moisture separator reheater system. Downey says the refueling outage will take several weeks. Unit 2 will be able to provide enough power for all of the plant’s duties while Unit 1 is turned off.
