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Sunday, March 09, 2003 Page: 9A
SALEM TWP. – Workers at PPL’s nuclear power plant near Berwick began the
largest improvement project in the facility’s history when Unit 2 was shut
down early Saturday morning for its planned refueling and inspection outage.
During the outage, plant crews will replace all four of the unit’s steam
turbines, which spin a generator to produce electricity at the plant.
“This long-term investment will provide an extra 50 megawatts of
generation capacity. …” said Herbert D. Woodeshick, special assistant to
the president for Susquehanna.
Crews will remove the unit’s three low-pressure turbines and one
high-pressure turbine and install new, more efficient ones. More than 4
million pounds of material – equal to 333 full-grown male African elephants –
will be moved. Each low-pressure turbine is about 14 feet in diameter, 34 feet
long and weighs about 140 tons.
The high-pressure turbine is somewhat smaller and lighter.
Unit 1’s turbines will undergo a similar retrofit next year.
The facility schedules these planned biennial outages for the spring
because the demand for electricity is lower then, as compared with other times
of the year. This is Unit 2’s 11th such outage since it began operation in
1985; last spring, Unit 1 underwent its 12th refueling outage since it began
commercial operation in 1983.
The plant, located in Luzerne County about seven miles north of Berwick, is
owned jointly by PPL Susquehanna LLC and Allegheny Electric Cooperative Inc.
and is operated by PPL Susquehanna.