Uprated Point Beach unit back online

Tuesday, 20 December 2011 Unit 1 of the Point Beach nuclear power plant in Wisconsin has restarted following a 17% increase in its licensed power, NextEra Energy announced. In April 2009, the company requested permission from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to increase the capacity of each of the pressurized water reactors at the site from 512 MWe to 600 MWe. In early May 2011, the NRC determined that NextEra could safely raise output of the units primarily by carrying out significant upgrades to several plant systems and components, including safety-related pumps and valves, as well as the turbine-generator sets. The work to upgrade unit 1 was conducted during a routine maintenance and refuelling outage that began on 3 October. NextEra implemented a similar uprate of unit 2 during a refuelling outage earlier this year.