Perry Nuclear Generating Station

For other uses, see Perry (disambiguation).

The Perry Nuclear Power Plant is located on a 1,100-acre (450 ha) site on Lake Erie, 40 miles (65 km) northeast of Cleveland in North Perry, Ohio, USA. The nuclear power plant is owned by First Energy Nuclear Operating Corporation.

The reactor is a General Electric BWR-6 boiling water reactor design, with a Mark III containment design. The original core power level of 3,579 megawatts thermal was increased to 3,758 megawatts thermal in 2000, making Perry one of the largest BWRs in the United States.

History

Built at a cost of $6 billion, Perry-1 is one of the most expensive power plants ever constructed.

Perry was originally designed as a two-unit installation, but construction on Unit 2 was suspended in 1985 and formally cancelled in 1994. At the time of cancellation, all of the major buildings and structures for the second unit were completed, including the 500-foot-tall (150 m) cooling tower. It is possible that a second unit could be constructed on the site, but current economical and regulatory conditions are not conducive to doing so (in addition to back taxes that would be due to the "abandon in place" designations on many objects in Unit 2). At any rate, the second unit would have to be re-built from the ground up to accommodate the newer reactor design that would almost certainly be installed.

Eleven hundred acres at the Perry plant were designated in 1993 as an urban wildlife sanctuary by the National Institute for Urban Wildlife. The area has trees, shrubs, streams and ponds; and a habitat for heron, belted kingfisher, ducks and geese. The forested area is ideal for the crane-fly orchid, a rare species in Ohio. The site includes a wetland that contains spotted turtles, an endangered species in Ohio.

On March 28, 2010, there was a fire in a lubrication system for one of the water pumps that feeds water for generation of steam. Reactor power was reduced to 70% as a safety precaution, and the fire was extinguished in less than three hours. Two plant fire brigade personnel were brought to a local hospital for "heat stress" following the fire. No customers lost power during this event.

In addition to Perry, FirstEnergy also owns and operates the Davis-Besse and Beaver Valley nuclear plants.

	Unit 1	Unit 2
Reactor Type	BWR-6	BWR-6
Reactor Manufacturer	General Electric	General Electric
Turbine Manufacturer	General Electric	General Electric
Thermal Power	3,758 megawatts	Unit canceled in 1994
Electrical Output	1,260 megawatts	Unit canceled in 1994
Transmission System Connection	345,000 volts	Unit canceled in 1994
Construction Permit Issued	May 3, 1977	May 3, 1977 (construction suspended in 1985)
Initial Criticality	June 1986	Unit canceled in 1994
First Electrical Generation	November 13, 1986	Unit canceled in 1994
Operational Date	November 18, 1987	Unit canceled in 1994
Expiration of Original License	March 18, 2026	Unit canceled in 1994

Ownership

The reactor is owned and operated by FirstEnergy. Four of its subsidiaries each own a share in the plant:

Company	Percentage	Notes
Cleveland Electric Illuminating	44.9%
Ohio Edison	30%
Pennsylvania Power	5.2%	Ohio Edison subsidiary
Toledo Edison	19.9%

Surrounding population

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of 10 miles (16 km), concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, and an ingestion pathway zone of about 50 miles (80 km), concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity.

The 2010 U.S. population within 10 miles (16 km) of Perry was 83,410, an increase of 8.0 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within 50 miles (80 km) was 2,281,531, a decrease of 3.0 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Cleveland (36 miles to city center). Canadian population is not included in these figures.

Seismic risk

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at Perry was 1 in 47,619, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.