April 2013 - Volume 13 - Xcel Energy

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The components that make up Prairie Island’s new steam
generators collectively weigh 660 tons and will arrive at the
plant sometime this spring after a trip across the Atlantic
Ocean and up the Mississippi River.
AREVA has direct access to the Saone River, which hits
the Mediterranean Sea at the port of Marseille. From there,
the RSGs were loaded on an ocean vessel, which set sail on
Feb. 9 for the port of New Orleans, La.
After arriving in New Orleans, the RSGs were offloaded
and placed on a shallow-draft barge for continued travel up
the Mississippi River to Prairie Island. Prairie Island’s old
steam generators will be changed out during the Unit Two
outage scheduled for fall 2013.
The new steam generators will increase the unit’s energy
performance and efficiency while reducing future operation,
maintenance and inspection costs, Walters said.
The St. Marcel factory was awarded its first U.S. contract
for the Prairie Island Unit One replacement steam generators
in 1999, and those generators were eventually put into service
in 2004. The order for the Unit Two steam generators was
signed in 2006.
After the generators are installed at the Prairie Island
site, the two parts of each generator will be assembled and
submitted to an inspection called a “hydrotest,” he said. They
also will be inspected to ensure they meet federal standards.
In anticipation of the generators’ arrival, a building was
constructed to store and prepare them for installation. In addition,
a complex of trailers was set up to provide workspace for
the staff dedicated to this project.
Preparations also have included a team representing Prairie
Island meeting with NRC Region III officials to discuss the
project’s oversight, scheduling and technical specifications,
Walters said. This information is provided to help prepare NRC
inspectors for the planned inspection of the generators.
The generators are approximately 70 feet tall and weigh
330 tons each. The total project cost is $280 million.
The replacement project will result in approximately 800
personnel being onsite during the 2013 Unit Two refueling effort,
in addition to the hundreds of outage contractors onsite
for other outage activities. The Unit Two steam generator replacement
outage is expected to take 65 days.
In other Prairie Island news, the plant’s Unit One reactor
returned to full power on Jan. 8 after crews completed a scheduled
maintenance and refueling outage. During the outage,
which began Oct. 23, approximately 600 contractors helped
plant staff complete maintenance tasks to prepare the unit for
its next operating cycle and replaced one-third of the unit’s fuel.
Xcel Energy’s Prairie Island and Monticello nuclear generating
plants are among the company’s lowest-cost sources of
generation on a per megawatt-hour basis. They run 24 hours
a day, seven days per week, except during refueling outages,
and they do not produce any greenhouse gas emissions.
Each of the two 550-megawatt reactors at Prairie Island
is refueled approximately once every 18 months. When both
units are operating, the Prairie Island plant near Red Wing
generates 1,100 megawatts of electricity.
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