Workers at Xcel Energy’s Prairie Island Nuclear Plant began a nine week refueling and maintenance effort last Friday, allowing the facility to continue providing reliable, carbon-free energy for more than one million customers throughout the Upper Midwest.
Around 700 specialists join the plant’s permanent staff and colleagues from across Xcel Energy’s nuclear team to perform the work.
This provides a significant boost to the economies of Goodhue County and the surrounding region.
The effort, which happens every two years for each of the two units at Prairie Island, helps set up the plant for a future extension of its operations, which will play an important part in achieving Minnesota’s goal of 100% carbon-free energy by 2040.
While Prairie Island’s Unit 2 is out of service, refueling and plant maintenance will improve equipment and plant reliability and help ensure that the plant continues to provide safe, clean and reliable power to the region.
During this outage, Unit 1 will continue operations to provide electricity to customers.
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