NEW YORK - Entergy Corp.'s 506-megawatt Vermont Yankee nuclear power station in Vermont exited a refueling outage and ramped up to 92 percent of capacity by early Monday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report.
The New Orleans-based company shut the unit by Oct. 24 for the planned refueling.
During the outage, the company replaced the low-pressure turbines to support a proposed increase in power output, in addition to normal refueling activities like replacing a third of the fuel in the reactor.
The last time the unit shut for refueling was from April 5 to May 5, 2004. The unit is on an 18-month refueling cycle.
The Vermont Yankee station is in Vernon in Windham County about 80 miles north of Hartford, Connecticut.
One megawatt powers about 800 homes, according to North American averages.
Entergy's Entergy Nuclear subsidiary, the second largest nuclear generator in the United States, operates the Vermont Yankee station.
Entergy's subsidiaries own and operate about 30,000 MW of generating capacity, market electricity, and transmit and distribute power to 2.6 million customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
Vermont Yankee has completed its regularly scheduled refueling. The plant has resumed providing 540 megawatts of low cost, emission free electricity to the region- as well as implementing upgrades that will permit Vermont Yankee to operate at a higher capacity, pending Nuclear Regulatory Commission rulings.
