[BETA] Fortnightly

Florida Power & Light completed a five-year, multibillion-dollar investment to upgrade its Turkey Point and St. Lucie nuclear plants, adding more than 500 MW of energy capacity. The upgrades of Turkey Point Unit 3, located in Miami-Dade County, and St. Lucie Units 1 and 2, located in St. Lucie County, were completed in 2012.

Georgia Power completed placing basemat structural concrete for the nuclear island at its Vogtle Unit 3 nuclear project. The utility is building two new reactors at the Plant Vogtle site near Waynesboro, Ga. The full outlines of both nuclear islands have been completed to grade level. The first components for erecting the Unit 3 containment vessel are completed and staged for installation once the basemat concrete has cured, including the Unit 3 containment vessel bottom head.

Babcock & Wilcox mPower (B&W mPower) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) signed a contract to prepare and support nuclear regulatory commission (NRC) review of a construction permit application for a B&W mPower small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear plant at TVA’s Clinch River Site in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The DOE awarded a cost-sharing grant to B&W mPower in November 2012. Preliminary work at the Clinch River site is expected to begin once B&W mPower and the DOE sign a cooperative agreement for the grant fund

Progress Energy Florida, a subsidiary of Duke Energy, will retire the Crystal River nuclear plant in Citrus County, Fla. The company is reviewing alternatives to replace the power produced by the unit, including the potential construction of a new natural gas-fueled plant. The nuclear unit, which began operating in 1977, was shut down in the fall of 2009 for refueling and replacement of its steam generators when a delamination was discovered in the outer layer of the containment building’s concrete wall.