APS Employees Complete Palo Verde Unit 3 Refueling, Set New Mark for Outage Efficiency
November 16, 2016
Outage Completed in 28 Days WINTERSBURG, Ariz. – For the third time in Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station history, Arizona Public Service Co. employees completed a refueling and maintenance outage in less than 30 days. This outage set a station record for the shortest outage ever. When Palo Verde Unit 3 reconnected to the electricity grid at 5:37 p.m. Arizona time on Saturday, November 5, the record was officially in the books at 28 days, 17 hours and 37 minutes. By comparison, the average length of a refueling and maintenance outage at all U.S. reactors in 2015 was 36.3 days, according to industry data. Palo Verde has three virtually identical 1,330 megawatt reactors. Unit 3’s planned refueling outage bested the previous Palo Verde record, which was established during the 2014 refueling outage for Unit 2. That outage lasted a total 28 days, 22 hours. The first sub-30 day refueling outage in plant history was set in 2013 when Unit 1 was refueled in 29 days, 18 hours. The latest...
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