American Electric Power (AEP) has announced it will replace both reactor vessel heads at the Donald C Cook plant at a cost of $44 million. Framatome ANP has been selected for fabrication of the vessel heads.

“Although we don’t have current vessel head problems at Cook, replacement is the right long-term solution and demonstrates AEP’s commitment to extended operation,” said Chris Bakken, senior vice president for nuclear generation at AEP.

Replacement for unit 1 will take place during the autumn 2006 refuelling outage and unit 2 during the autumn 2007 refuelling.