Cook Plant Unit 1 Refueling Outage Begins This Week

cookplantinbridgman-14
cookplantinbridgman-14

A refueling outage at the Cook nuclear power plant’s Unit 1 will begin this Wednesday. Cook plant spokesperson Bill Schalk tells WSJM News this will be the 27th refueling outage for the unit. Around 1,000 extra workers will be on hand at the Bridgman area plant for the next several months to conduct a variety of maintenance tasks.

“There’s a lot of equipment that we can’t take out of service when the unit is running,” Schalk said. “So, we have to completely shut down, and then we have access to a lot of the safety systems where we can do pump maintenance, motor maintenance, those types of things.”

Schalk tells us they’re specifically going to replace the baffle bolts in the reactor. Those bolts hold the baffle plates in place, controlling water flow through the fuel assemblies in the reactor. The refueling outage is expected to run through the fourth quarter of the year