Braidwood Generating Station is located in Will County in northeastern

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Roc ...

, U.S. The nuclear power plant serves

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

and northern Illinois with electricity. The plant was originally built by

Commonwealth Edison Commonwealth Edison, commonly known by syllabic abbreviation as ComEd, is the largest electric utility in Illinois, and the in Chicago and much of Northern Illinois. Its service territory stretches roughly from Iroquois County on the south to t ...

company, and subsequently transferred to Com Ed's parent company, Exelon Corporation. Following Exelon's spin-off of their Generation company, the station was transferred to Constellation Energy. This station has two Westinghouse

pressurized water reactor A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a type of light-water nuclear reactor. PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan and Canada). In a PWR, the primary coolant (water) is ...

s. Unit #1 came online in July 1987. Unit #2 came online in May 1988. The units were licensed by the

Nuclear Regulatory Commission The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy. Established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, the NRC began oper ...

to operate until 2026 and 2027, then granted extended licenses until 2046 and 2047. Each unit has received two power uprates during their lifetime, the first in May 2001 for 175.6 MWt and the second in February 2014 for 58.4 MWt. The power uprates at Braidwood granted in 2001 make it the largest nuclear plant in the state, generating a net total of 2,386

megawatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after Jame ...

s. However the three largest Illinois nuclear power plants are nearly equal in generating capability as

LaSalle County Nuclear Generating Station LaSalle County Nuclear Generating Station, located in Brookfield Township, LaSalle County, Illinois, near Marseilles, southeast of Ottawa, serves Chicago and Northern Illinois with electricity. The plant is owned and operated by Constellati ...

is only 2 MW less in capacity than Braidwood and Byron Nuclear Generating Station is only 4 MW less than LaSalle.

Electricity generation

Surrounding population

The

defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of , concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, and an ingestion pathway zone of about , concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity. The 2010 U.S. population within of Braidwood was 33,910, an increase of 6.5 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 4,976,020, an increase of 5.3 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Joliet (20 miles to city center), as well as parts of both Aurora and Naperville (42 miles to city center).

Tritium leaks

Exelon was sued by residents of Will County and by the

state's attorney In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, or state attorney is the chief prosecutor and/or chief law enforcement officer representing a U.S. state in a ...

in 2006. The lawsuit alleges that the Braidwood plant released radioactive

tritium Tritium ( or , ) or hydrogen-3 (symbol T or H) is a rare and radioactive isotope of hydrogen with half-life about 12 years. The nucleus of tritium (t, sometimes called a ''triton'') contains one proton and two neutrons, whereas the nucleus ...

into local water in violation of its permit. However, the US NRC has said the response is based on "emotion, not risk", and gone on record to state the tritium releases did not jeopardize human health or safety in any manner. The Illinois EPA also reported that all tests have confirmed releases are below the action levels of 20,000 picoCuries per liter, currently set by the EPA. However, Exelon agreed to provide bottled water to residents of Godley and to residents within 1500 feet of the blowdown line to the Kankakee River.

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 Braidwood was 1 in 136,986, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.

Bill Dedman Bill Dedman (born 1960) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, an investigative reporter for '' Newsday'', and co-author of the biography of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark, '' Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark ...

, "What are the odds? US nuke plants ranked by quake risk," ''

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's ...

'', March 17, 2011 http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42103936 Accessed April 19, 2011.

Notes

References

External links

Braidwood Nuclear Generating Station official website
{{U.S. Nuclear Plants Energy infrastructure completed in 1988 Buildings and structures in Will County, Illinois Nuclear power plants in Illinois Nuclear power stations using pressurized water reactors Exelon