US nuclear units have continued to reduce overall outage time, with the median outage among units refueling improving by four days, from 38 to 34 days.
Of the 30 units that refueled, 27 have returned to the grid – 18 after shorter refuelings than their previous ones and one with the same number of days.
Of the eight that took longer, only one took more than a week longer. That was Arkansas Nuclear One 2, which replaced its steam generators.
The fastest refueling was done by Braidwood 2, a record for US PWRs. This took a mere 16 days. Interestingly, the top six fastest refuelings were by Exelon, at Braidwood 2 (16 days), Dresden 3 (18 days), Quad Cities 1 (19 days), Peach Bottom 2 (20 days), Byron 1 (20 days) and LaSalle 2 (21 days).
In addition, several units announced that they have had their best ever refuelings, including TVA’s Sequoyah 2, AmerGen’s Oyster Creek, and FirstEnergy’s Beaver Valley 2.
