The Tennessee Valley Authority's Sequoyah Nuclear Plant has returned its Unit 1 reactor to operation after completing more than 10,000 activities during its springtime refueling outage.
"Although safely refueling the reactor was our key activity, the primary focus is always on improving the safety and reliability of plant equipment," said John Carlin, site vice president. "Team members refurbished or replaced more than 500 individual valves, electrical breakers and motors, some of which can only be accessed when the unit is offline."
Unit 1 returned to operation on Saturday.
In addition to refueling, the site successfully completed a detailed 10-year inspection of the reactor vessel and added a number of enhancements to the station's emergency operation capabilities.
At full capacity, Sequoyah's two generating units provide a combined 2,200 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 1.3 million homes across the Tennessee Valley.