Oyster Creek Plant Back Online, Company Says

Exelon Corp. said Wednesday that the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generation Station was back online following an outage for refueling and maintenance that required the plant to be shut down. Oyster Creek was offline for a month, the company said, and returned to operating status at 7:18pm Tuesday night.

During the 30-day outage, workers replaced both of the station's main power transformers, refueled the reactor and performed a number of maintenance tasks that can only be completed while the unit is offline. Exelon prepared for the replacement of the main transformers for more than a year, the company said. The project totaled $33 million.

Also during the downtime, workers set the stage for completion of an underground piping project that is planned to be completed by year's end. That $13.3 million project will see the movement of underground pipes containing radioactive tritium above ground or into monitored vaults.

The process of bringing the plant back online did not come with its glitches, however. Bloomberg News reported that a recirculation pump failed during an initial restart yesterday, just before 3:00pm. No one was injured and the public was never at risk during the glitch, Exelon reported to federal authorities.