Fuel Change and Maintenance Underway At One Of Exelon’s Marseilles Reactors

Just like how you get your car’s oil changed after several thousand miles, workers at the Exelon plant in Marseilles are busy changing the fuel there.

The two reactors at the LaSalle County Generating Station each need to have their fuel changed once every two years. Workers Monday morning began the complex job of changing out one-third of the fuel in one of the reactors.

Much like how mechanics inspect your car after changing the oil, Exelon is doing something similar as well, only it takes more than a few mechanics. The station has brought in more than 1,400 nuclear workers in addition to the 800 who are already there. That’s because they need to use the reactor’s downtime to do about 14,000 maintenance activities that can’t be done when it’s up and running.

At full power, the plant is able to power more than 2 million homes. The second reactor is continuing to run while the first is down, and ComEd is not reporting any outages as a result of the refueling.