Entergy’s Waterford 3 reconnected to the grid after a 34-day refuelling outage. In addition to replenishing the reactor’s fuel, outage work including high temperature chemical cleaning of the steam generators, the first use of the practice in the USA.
The high temperature chemical cleaning process, which has been successfully in Europe, eliminated fouling that would have gradually reduced the plant’s output over time.
During the outage, Entergy employees at the plant passed 5 million people hours without a lost time accident. Records were also set for low radiological exposure during 11 different major segments of outage work.
Major work activities during the outage included replacing internals and restoring a gasket on one of four reactor coolant pumps, performing preventative maintenance on the main turbine, and repairing instrument nozzles on the reactor coolant loops.
