Unit 1 at Susquehanna Nuclear Power Plant Safely Shut Down for Planned Refueling and Maintenance

BERWICK, Pa., March 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Operators safely shut down the Unit 1 reactor at the Susquehanna nuclear power plant in northeastern Pennsylvania early Saturday (3/31) after 282 days of consecutive operation to begin a planned refueling and maintenance outage.

Each of the two units at the Susquehanna plant is taken out of service for refueling and maintenance every 24 months. Workers will replace about 40 percent of the uranium fuel and complete hundreds of scheduled equipment maintenance tasks and upgrades.

Unit 2 at the plant continues to operate at full power.

"During this outage we'll be focused on required refueling and maintenance tasks as well as proactively replacing several pieces of key equipment, as we do every outage, to ensure the plant is well-maintained," said Timothy S. Rausch, senior vice president and chief nuclear officer for PPL Susquehanna. "We'll also be performing hundreds of planned inspections, including an inspection of the Unit 1 main turbine to confirm that there is no recurrence of the cracks discovered in 2011 that led PPL to replace affected turbine blades.

"We're also focused on making sure all employees and our contractors continue to demonstrate the high standards established in training," Rausch said.

PPL schedules nuclear refueling and maintenance outages at this time of year, when the demand for power on the grid is lower.

The Susquehanna plant, located in Luzerne County about seven miles north of Berwick, is owned jointly by PPL Susquehanna LLC and Allegheny Electric Cooperative Inc. and is operated by PPL Susquehanna.

PPL Susquehanna LLC is one of PPL Corporation's generating affiliates. Headquartered in Allentown, Pa., PPL Corporation (NYSE: PPL) owns or controls about 19,000 megawatts of generating capacity in the United States, sells energy in key U.S. markets, and delivers electricity and natural gas to about 10 million customers in the United States and the United Kingdom. More information is available at www.pplweb.com.

SOURCE PPL Susquehanna