Submitted by Entergy
Lycoming, N.Y. – Entergy’s James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant has achieved a site record for the most days of continuously producing electricity. FitzPatrick reached 702 days of safe, continuous operation today, Sept. 12, just prior to a safe shutdown to start the station’s 19th refueling outage.
This record performance places FitzPatrick first in the number of days of continuous operation within the Entergy nuclear fleet and seventh all-time for all the boiling water reactors in the United States. Entergy’s Indian Point Energy Center’s Unit 3 reached 678 days of continuous operation in March 2009.
This FitzPatrick milestone ends a remarkable breaker to breaker run (operating from one refueling outage to the next without taking the plant offline). Entergy’s Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station achieved a similar breaker to breaker run in April of this year just prior to commencing its twenty-eighth refueling outage following 532 consecutive days of safe, continuous operation.
The previous record for FitzPatrick was 451 continuous days when it ran from March 2001 through June 2002.
“These are major accomplishments for the FitzPatrick and Vermont Yankee teams. Our goal is to continuously operate our plants safely and reliably from one refueling outage to the next – and we did just that,†said Pete Dietrich, Entergy’s site vice president at FitzPatrick. “We remain committed to a “safety first†approach with a sharp focus on improving equipment reliability, human performance, standards of excellence and continuous improvement. It is that constant commitment and focus that continues to drive our success reflected by this record run.â€
FitzPatrick also led the Entergy nuclear fleet in 2009 with a recorded average capacity factor of 97.9 percent. Â This means that FitzPatrick was online producing safe, low-cost energy more than 97 percent of the time over a three-year period.
Entergy’s James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant is located on the southeast shore of Lake Ontario in the town of Scriba in Oswego County New York, approximately seven miles east-northeast of the City of Oswego. FitzPatrick’s more than 600 employees live throughout Central-NY communities.
Entergy Corporation is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, and it is the second-largest nuclear generator in the United States. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.7 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Entergy has annual revenues of more than $10 billion and more than 15,000 employees.
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