NW nuclear plant back online after turbine vibrations force rebalancing
The Columbia Generating Station is back online after Energy Northwest operators worked on a turbine.
The Northwest’s only nuclear power plant was taken offline Dec. 6 as part of a plan if the turbine’s vibrations reached a predetermined point, said officials.
Workers installed 1.5-pound balance weights on each end of a 34-foot, 133-ton low-pressure turbine that was installed during the plant’s spring refueling outage.
Plant officials said vibrations are not uncommon after turbine replacements, and the weights help to balance the vibrations and ensure its long-term reliability.
Workers took advantage of the downtime to perform additional maintenance, said Energy Northwest officials.
Suzanne Cooper, senior vice president of Power Services at the Bonneville Power Administration, said in a release that they had worked closely with Energy Northwest to identify a window of time when the impact of an outage could be minimized.
The Columbia Generating Station has produced more than 8.2 million megawatt-hours of electricity so far in 2021.
The plant north of Richland is the third largest electricity generator in the state of Washington.
