Wolf Creek Generating Station is a

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 ...

plant located near

Burlington, Kansas Burlington is a city in and the county seat of Coffey County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 2,634. History Burlington was founded in 1857. It was named after Burlington, Vermont, the native ho ...

. It occupies of the total controlled by the owner. Its namesake, Wolf Creek, was dammed to create Coffey County Lake (formerly Wolf Creek Lake), and provides water for the condensers.

History

Construction started on May 30, 1977 and it was commissioned on September 3, 1985, at a cost of (in 2007 value). This plant has one 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, India and Canada). In a PWR, water is used both as ...

that came online on June 4, 1985. The reactor was rated at 1,170 MW(e). A new turbine generator rotor was installed in 2011 that increased electrical output to approximately 1250 MW(e). The reactor output remained unchanged at 3565 MW (th). On October 4, 2006, the operator applied to 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) for a renewal and extension of the plant's operating license. The NRC granted the renewal on November 20, 2008, extending the license from forty years to sixty. On January 13, 2012, at 2 p.m., due to a breaker failure and an unexplained loss of power to an electrical transformer, the plant experienced an automatic reactor trip and loss of offsite power that lasted 3 hours. The nuclear plant was a target of an unsuccessful

cyberattack A cyberattack (or cyber attack) occurs when there is an unauthorized action against computer infrastructure that compromises the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of its content. The rising dependence on increasingly complex and inte ...

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals and solves problems by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hackersomeone with knowledge of bug (computing), bugs or exp ...

s in 2017, leading to indictments in 2021. FSB's 16th Center military unit 71330 associated Russian hacker groups Energetic Bear, Berserk Bear and Crouching Yeti were associated with the attacks at Wolf Creek.

Electricity production

Ownership

The Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, a

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic states, South Atlantic regions of the United States. It borders Maryland to its south and west, Pennsylvania to its north, New Jersey ...

corporation, operates the power plant. The ownership is divided between the

Evergy Evergy, Inc. is an American Investor-owned utility, investor-owned utility (IOU) with publicly traded stock with headquarters in Topeka, Kansas, and in Kansas City, Missouri. The company was formed from a merger of Westar Energy of Topeka and G ...

(94%), and Kansas Electric Power Cooperative, Inc. (6%).

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 Wolf Creek was 5,466, a decrease of 2.8 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 176,656, a decrease of 1.7 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Emporia (30 miles to city center).

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 Wolf Creek was 0.0019%, or 1 in 55,556, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.

Notes

References

External links

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Old Official Website (Archived)
(404) *

Energy Information Administration The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System responsible for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating energy information to promote sound policymaking, efficient markets, and pub ...

U.S. Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear we ...

(DOE): *
Wolf Creek Nuclear Power Plant, Kansas (April 26, 2012)
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Kansas (estimates)
(version February 16, 2017) *

* {{U.S. nuclear plants Energy infrastructure completed in 1985 Buildings and structures in Coffey County, Kansas Nuclear power plants in Kansas Nuclear power stations using pressurized water reactors Evergy 1985 establishments in Kansas