Lot Of Work Planned For Cook Refueling Outage

cookplant-5
cookplant-5

Unit 2 of the Cook Nuclear Plant is going offline at midnight for a refueling outage. Plant spokesman Bill Schalk says they have other projects going on which will extend the duration of the work a little longer than normal.

“One of them is the replacement of the entire turbine generator system for Unit 2,” says Schalk. “That’s a $250 million project that’s going to extend the refueling outage by a little bit.”

The other project is speeding up the inspection of what are called baffle bolts after some were found to be degraded at a pair of nuclear plants this spring. Those bolts hold the plates in place which allow direct water flow through the assemblies in the reactor. Schalk says it’s an industry-wide initiative to accelerate the inspections and replacement of those bolts where needed. He says the goal is to have the outage wrapped up before the end of the fourth quarter. About 2,500 contract workers are being brought in to help out.