On Tuesday, FirstEnergy told federal regulators it has scheduled a major overhaul of unit 2 at the Beaver Valley nuclear plant for 2017.
The outage will see replacement of the reactor's original steam generators and reactor pressure vessel head, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. While company executives did not offer a cost estimate at an informational meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, such a project can be expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. FirstEnergy is also in the process of planning a steam generator replacement at its Davis-Besse plant on Lake Erie in the spring.
According to the NRC, unit 2 at Beaver Valley was first licensed in 1987. The plant in Shippingport, Pa., uses two Westinghouse three-loop pressurized water reactors to generate about 1,800 megawatts.