Cook refueling starts

Refueling started Tuesday night for the Cook Nuclear Power Plant’s Unit 2 reactor in southwest Michigan. The unit in Bridgman ran for 18 months at 100.6% capacity, including a 452 consecutive day run that fell 19 days shy of the unit’s record. Over the course of the outage, about 1,900 contracted workers will supplement the regular 1,198-person plant staff. This is several hundred more than a typical refueling due to several additional major projects. More than 12,600 maintenance, inspection and equipment modification job activities totaling more than 310,000 work-hours are scheduled for two daily 12-hour work shifts. The expected outage duration has not been released by Indiana Michigan Power company.  (MRN)