The Limerick Generating Station is a

nuclear power plant A nuclear power plant (NPP), also known as a nuclear power station (NPS), nuclear generating station (NGS) or atomic power station (APS) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power st ...

located next to the

Schuylkill River The Schuylkill River ( , ) is a river in eastern Pennsylvania. It flows for U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map(). accessed April 1, 2011. from Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Pottsville ...

in Limerick Township, Montgomery County,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, approximately northwest of Center City,

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

. The facility has two

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

boiling water reactor A boiling water reactor (BWR) is a type of nuclear reactor used for the generation of electrical power. It is the second most common type of electricity-generating nuclear reactor after the pressurized water reactor (PWR). BWR are thermal neutro ...

(BWR) units, cooled by natural draft cooling towers. According to its owner, Constellation Energy, the two units are capable of producing 2,317 megawatts of power, which combined would provide electricity to around 2 million households. Constellation owns and operates this facility following their separation from Exelon Corporation in 2022. With the exception of refueling outages, Limerick Generating Station continuously operates at 100% power. The plant is connected to the grid, and transmits power, via multiple 500kv transmission lines. Limerick is a black start plant, meaning it does not require grid power for stator excitation. For critical standby power, Limerick depends on eight Fairbanks Morse 38 8-1/8 diesel engine generator sets that each deliver 3000 kilowatts of power and are capable of achieving rated speed within ten seconds of start. The cooling towers for the Limerick Generating Station can be seen for miles away in parts of Montgomery,

Chester Chester is a cathedral city in Cheshire, England, on the River Dee, Wales, River Dee, close to the England–Wales border. With a built-up area population of 92,760 in 2021, it is the most populous settlement in the borough of Cheshire West an ...

, and Berks counties, and can be seen from the top of the tallest buildings in Philadelphia, including the One Liberty Observation Deck at Liberty Place. On the first Monday of each calendar month, a 30-second-long "growl" will sound from sirens located within a 10 mile radius of the plant. This is with the exception of December or June, where the full volume siren sounds for 3 minutes long.

History

In 1969, the Philadelphia Electric Company (now PECO Energy, a subsidiary of

Exelon Exelon Corporation is an American public utility headquartered in Chicago, and incorporated in Pennsylvania. Exelon is the largest electric parent company in the United States by revenue and is the largest regulated electric utility in the Uni ...

) announced plans to build a nuclear power plant on a site along the

in Limerick Township, Montgomery County, approximately 30 miles northwest of

Center City, Philadelphia Center City includes the central business district and central neighborhoods of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It comprises the area that made up the City of Philadelphia prior to the Act of Consolidation, 1854, which extended the ci ...

. Community protests by the Keystone Alliance and other delays pushed the start of construction by the

Bechtel Bechtel Corporation () is an American engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company founded in San Francisco, California in 1898, and headquartered in Reston, Virginia in the Washington metropolitan area. , the '' E ...

Power Corporation to June 1974. Limerick Unit 1 first attained criticality (began producing nuclear power, at limited capacity) on December 22, 1984 and was certified for commercial operation on February 1, 1986. Limerick Unit 2 attained criticality on August 1, 1989, and commercial operation began on January 8, 1990. On July 27, 1994, an F3

tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with the surface of Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, although the ...

struck the area surrounding the Limerick Generating Station. The tornado narrowly missed the station by two miles, but caused considerable damage to a nearby housing development in Limerick Township. President

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Bush family and the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he i ...

visited the Limerick Generating Station in May 2006 to discuss

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by ...

and its role in the Advanced Energy Initiative, which he announced at the 2006 State of the Union Address. He toured the facility, including a trip to the control room of the plant. On October 20, 2014, the

Nuclear Regulatory Commission The United States 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) granted extensions for Limerick Units 1 and 2 for another 20 years. The units are now licensed to operate until 2044 and 2049 respectively. Unit 2 of the station was scrammed from 100% power to a shutdown on June 1, 2016, at 9 am. The reactor was shut down due to an electrical fault, causing the recirculation pumps to stop. The steam bypass valves that lead to the main condenser were opened and Limerick went through a normal hot shutdown process.

Electricity production

Seismic risk

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates the risk of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to every reactor in the U.S. According to the NRC study published in August 2010, Limerick's earthquake risk was calculated at 1 in 18,868. Following the

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster The Fukushima nuclear accident was a major nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan, which began on 11 March 2011. The cause of the accident was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which r ...

in 2011, government regulators announced the plant would undergo further evaluations for seismic activity risk. A quarry is located nearby which occasionally does blasting; however, this is done with the consent of plant staff.

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 Radioactive contamination, also called radiological pollution, is the deposition of, or presence of Radioactive decay, radioactive substances on surfaces or within solids, liquids, or gases (including the human body), where their presence is uni ...

, 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 Limerick was 252,197, an increase of 18.7 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 8,027,924, an increase of 6.1 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles: * Pennsylvania **

(28mi/45km) ** Allentown (27mi/43km) **

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of symbols, often specifically those of a written language, by means of Visual perception, sight or Somatosensory system, touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifacete ...

(19mi/31km) * New Jersey ** Trenton (Capital) (43mi/69km) ** Camden (32mi/52km) * Delaware ** Wilmington (33mi/53km)

References

External links