Indiana Michigan Power 2,100 MW Nuclear Station Moving Towards 20-Year Life Extension

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Indiana Michigan Power Company (Fort Wayne, Indiana), a subsidiary of American Electric Power Company (NYSE:AEP) (Columbus, Ohio), is in the process of renewing the licenses for Donald C Cook Nuclear Power Station 1,000-megawatt (MW) Units 1 and 2. The units are located on a 650-acre site in Bridgman, Berrien County, Michigan. The re-licensing process takes about two years, but preparations for getting a unit re-licensed can take many more years.

Unit 1 came online in 1975. Normal life and license would require it to close in 2014, but with the re-licensing and life extension projects, it will be able to operate until 2034. Unit 2 came online in 1978 and would likewise need to retire in 2017, but with license renewal and life extension will be able to operate until 2037. Both units have Westinghouse Pressurized Water Reactors that operate at about 600F and at 2,200 pounds per square inch. Unit 1 has a General Electric steam turbine/generator and Unit 2 has a Brown Bovari steam turbine/generator.

Donald C Cook originally cost $1.3 Billion and by the time the license renewal and life extension is complete AEP will have invested double that amount. The steam generators in the reactors for each unit were replaced in 1998 for Unit 2 ($125 million) and 2000 for Unit 1 ($170 million). AEP spent $574 million on cooling system upgrade and another $276 million on other upgrades from 1997 to 2000. Cook nuclear reactor heads are to be replaced for about $44 million and another $45 million will be required to replace three low-pressure turbines on Unit 1 in 2006. The license renewal is projected to cost over $15 million.

The Cook Nuclear Station has about 900 AEP employees on site and over a hundred more offsite for support. There are roughly again as many contractors on site for refuel outages that take place on each unit for about one month every eighteen months. AEP submitted the initial paperwork for the new license in October 2003 and hopes to receive the renewal in September 2005. The cost of the life extension is projected to be less than half the cost of a new plant that could produce power as cheaply as this one.

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