On Friday government agencies confirmed that all of the nuclear plants shut down because of last week's extreme weather on the East Coast are now back online.
Citing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy also reported that all operating reactors that had scaled back their output because of the storm are back at 100 percent power. Meanwhile, the three units that were manually shut down or tripped – Salem 1, Nine Mile Point 1 and Indian Point 3 – were powering up on Friday. Seven units in the region were offline before the storm for refueling and maintenance.
While nuclear generation in the Northeast returns to pre-storm levels, distributing that power remains a huge problem. According to the DOE, there were 3,628,739 customers without power as of 9 a.m. Friday.