Friday, American Electric Power (AEP) said it has restarted the Cook Nuclear Plant Unit 1 reactor and has begun testing the unit's repaired turbine generator system. The 1,030-megawatt unit has been out of service since September 2008 when turbine vibrations, caused by broken low-pressure turbine blades, damaged the turbine generator, support structures and associated systems.
The company said that the unit will be connected to the transmission grid with repaired low-pressure turbine rotors that do not include the last row of blades. Testing and monitoring will take place on and off line over the next several days. When the unit returns to full power, the electrical output will be reduced by an annual average of approximately 70 megawatts. New low-pressure turbine rotors that support full electrical output will be installed in the fall of 2011.
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