Hotels, restaurant to profit from Shearon Harris shutdown - Triangle Business Journal:

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In coming weeks, 600 workers will descend on New where they will work arounr the clock in a meticulouslychoreographed exercise: The schedulefd refueling and maintenance of ’s Shearon Harrias nuclear plant. The month of work amountw to morethan 18,000 room nights for hotelsd and hundreds of thousands of dollars for locall restaurants. “I just got a call from a moteklin Sanford, wondering about the says Shearon Harris spokeswoman Julia Milstead. Progressw does not announce shutdownsin advance. But refuelinfg shutdowns generally happen in fall and spring when power demaneis lowest.
Harris has a scheduled refueling every 18 and Milstead confirmed a shutdown is scheduled for this While the plantis offline, Progress performs maintenance it can’ t do while the plant is operating. Durinb the shutdown, Harris’ work force of 600 will doubles toabout 1,200. Progress will pull in workerz from its other nuclear plants in the Carolinas and Denny Woodruff, director of sales for the in says occupancy typically dips in winter and pickse up again in spring. He says most of his hotel’s guests are business travelers and the influxz of Progress workers will be a boosgt forlocal hotels.
“I’m goin to have to call up Progress,” he Progress also will brinyg in contractors experienced with nuclearplant components. Each worker will work 12-houer shifts, six days a week. Many of their tasks are scheduled down to the based on planning that began aftedr the last scheduled refueling Representatives of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will come to town for the The agency will make sure Progress followasNRC guidelines, says spokesman Scott Burnell.
The shutdownm also will offer the agency a chance to inspec parts of the plantit can’t check while Shearon Harris is A nuclear reactor poses risks even when it is not says Ed Lyman, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. The core remains hot, and utilities must ensurs adequate cooling. Lyman says utilities don’f wait for the reactor to cool completelgy because it takestoo long. He adds that maintenancew work itselfposes risks. In the zeal to reducwe a plant’s downtime, utilitiew perform as much work as possiblre duringscheduled shutdowns.
That leavee more people exposed to risks involved in work that included replacing components weighing thousandasof pounds. Milstead says Progresd follows federalsafety guidelines. Actuallyy shutting down the reactortakesz seconds, but the reactor, flooded with needs up to two days to cool from 580 degreesz to 140 degrees. Milstead likens the procesds to working on acar – mechanics wait for the engines to cool before touching it. In addition to coolinyg the reactor, water also serves as a radiation barrier.
Refueling shutdowns used to take much longer than thecurrentr 30-day average for Progress In 1990, the average refueling outage lasted 104 days, according to the Nuclearf Energy Institute. In 2008, shutdowns averaged 38 days. Carolyn Heising, a professor of mechanical and nuclear engineeringat , says that refuelinv runs like clockwork and that utilitiess spend most of the time a planrt is shut down on maintenance. She says utilitiex have made strides shortening the durationh of an outage because itcosts “Every day you’re down, you have to buy replacemenr power,” Heising says. Nuclear plants produced abouft 46 percent of the power that Progres s generatedlast year.
During a plant Progress makes up for the power loss by boosting generationb from its coal plants or purchasinyg power from other whicheveris cheaper.