Arkansas Nuclear One's Unit 1 Returns to Service

08/08/2013

RUSSELLVILLE, Ark. – Arkansas Nuclear One's Unit 1 reconnected to the grid at 10:43 p.m. CDT Wednesday after a major restoration effort involving ANO and Entergy Nuclear workers, government officials and multiple third-party experts.

"We'd like to thank the community for their outpouring of support at both the local and state levels," said Jeremy Browning, ANO site vice president. "As a corporate neighbor of the Russellville area, your confidence in us is deeply appreciated. The ANO team is committed to the safety of this plant, the people who work here and those who live in this community."

Prior to restarting, ANO's Unit 1 required extensive restoration efforts, including damage evaluation, repairs to non-nuclear plant components and rescheduling the unit's refueling activities. The restoration was necessary following the collapse of a contractor's crane while moving a generator stator out of the turbine building, a non-nuclear part of the plant.

All told, Entergy employees and contractors devoted more than 790,000 hours of effort to the unit's safe return to service. The restoration effort saw 55 tons of steel erected and 93 cubic yards of concrete placed – in addition to hundreds of cable installations, switchgear replacements and electrical repairs.

ANO workers developed a comprehensive startup monitoring plan to ensure the plant achieved a safe and controlled restart. The plan focused on both equipment and systems, including walk-downs by plant staff, extensive monitoring and testing activities, increased training, augmented crews and increased oversight. These plans were developed and challenged by both internal and external ANO subject matter experts.

Unit 1 has been offline since Sunday, March 24 when the plant entered its scheduled refueling outage.

Entergy Corporation, which celebrates its 100th birthday this year, 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, including more than 10,000 megawatts of nuclear power, making it one of the nation's leading nuclear generators. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.8 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Entergy has annual revenues of more than $10 billion and approximately 15,000 employees.

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