Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For details of the 1979 accident at this station, see Three Mile Island accident.
Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station is a civilian nuclear power plant located on an artificial island (Three Mile Island) in the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, United States. It was originally built with two pressurized water reactors (TMI-1 and TMI-2), but after TMI-2 suffered a partial meltdown in 1979, its core was removed from the site.
The plant was originally built by General Public Utilities Corporation, later renamed GPU Inc., and operated by Metropolitan Edison Company (Met-Ed), a GPU subsidiary. Following the accident at TMI-2, the plant was transferred under the ownership and operation of a new subsidiary company, GPU Nuclear (GPUN). GPUN continued to operate Unit 1 until its 1998 sale to AmerGen Energy Corporation, a joint venture of Philadelphia Electric Company Energy Inc. (PECO Energy) and British Energy Group Plc. PECO's share in AmerGen was inherited by Exelon Corporation in 2000, after that company was formed from the merger of PECO and Unicom Corporation. Exelon acquired British Energy's share in AmerGen in 2003, and transferred the plant under the direct ownership and operation of their Exelon Nuclear business unit.
The damaged and deactivated Unit 2 remained under GPU ownership until 2001, when GPU was acquired and absorbed by First Energy Corporation. First Energy continues to own TMI-2, but has subcontracted the maintenance and management of the site to AmerGen Energy from 2001-2003, and Exelon Nuclear from 2003-present.
Contents |
[edit] Unit One
TMI-1 is an 850 (originally 816) MWe pressurized water reactor supplied by Babcock and Wilcox. It first came online on April 19, 1974, and is licensed to operate through April 19, 2014. When TMI-2 suffered its meltdown in 1979, TMI-1 was offline for refueling. It came back online in October 1985, after a number of technical, legal, and regulatory complications. In 2004, TMI-1 generated 7,273,245 MWh of electricity at a capacity factor of 98.9%.
Unit-1 automatically shut down at 1:35 p.m. on Thursday, November 2, 2006.
[edit] Unit Two
TMI-2 was also supplied by Babcock and Wilcox, and first came online in December 1978. It was only online for approximately 90 days before it was ruined by a loss of coolant accident which caused a partial meltdown in March 1979. For more information about TMI-2 and the meltdown, see the Three Mile Island accident article.
[edit] References
- Department of Energy page
- Exelon fact sheet for TMI-1, 2004
- News about the November 02, 2006 shutdown
[edit] Map
- Maps and aerial photos
- Street map from Google Maps or Yahoo! Maps
- Topographic map from TopoZone
- Aerial image or topographic map from TerraServer-USA
- Satellite image from Google Maps or Microsoft Virtual Earth
