Re: Going To Work!!! WooHoo!!!!!
Where is the plant in the Quad Cities actually located? I don't remember seeing it in my couple of years of going there to inspect wrecked cars. Not close to town?
So is that a SOP, to do big maintanence/construction projects at one time, since the plant is down for a refuel? And I take it there refuel schedule is set by how long they want to go in between major maintanence? Cause they could operate for YEARS if they wanted to, without refueling.
Quad is actually just outside of Cordova, almost across the street from the dragway. It is named the "Quad Cities Nuclear Generating Station."
Exelon does refueling outages approximately once a year per reactor unit. Every plant in Illinois, except Clinton, has two units. So every 250 to 375 days a unit comes off line and is cycled down into outage. We (carpenters) go into the plant and build between 400 and 1000 scaffolds throught the plant to prepare for and conduct maintanance after the reactor unit is off line. Then once the maintanance is complete, the scaffold is torn down and returned to storage or the pieces are used in another scaffold built later.
Yes the units could be run for years without refuel but you have to take into account the profitability of using degraded fuel. The reactors in Illinois have had their outputs ramped up so high that they burn through their fuel in about a year. Exelon doesn't make a high enough profit on nuclear power to run them over a year without swapping out fuel. Or so I've been told. I have also been told that Exelon loses $3mil a day on average during an outage.
