Ameren Missouri’s Callaway Energy Center began its routine refueling and maintenance outage on Saturday, October 7, 2017. Tim Herrmann, the sites vice president, said the outage should last about 50 days and make the plant more efficient.
This marks the 22nd time Ameren has performed the regular maintenance and refueling of this plant. Senior director of nuclear operations, Barry Cox, said the refuel is integral to the plants safety.
"These refueling periods, which happen every 18 months, are an integral part of continuing nuclear energy's role in providing safe, reliable, affordable and carbon-free energy to our customers," Cox said in a press release.
The refuel includes a list of 10,000 tasks to accomplish. In order to complete this tasks in a timely manner Ameren has brought in 1,000 additional employees from across the state to complete the maintenance. These additional employees will work alongside Callaway’s regular workforce of about 800.
Tim Herrmann, the sites vice president, said “the outage is done to make the plant more reliable to continue to provide safe power for our customers here in Missouri.”
“It probably has a positive economic impact in the time period that we’re doing the outages," Hermann said. "We bring in a lot of people to support the maintenance activities and they’re investing hotel rooms, meals, and other things in the area.”
Ameren bringing in employees is expected to boost Callaway’s local economy. The 1,000 employees that Ameren is bringing to the county is expected to give local business increased activity.
Bruce Hackmann who is the Callaway economic development director expects to see a boost in the local economy.
“Its always a great boost for a lot of our retailers, restaurants and other service industry type businesses who really benefit to a large degree by the increased activity in the community,” Hackmann said.
The Callaway energy center typically generates close to 25 percent of the electricity for Ameren Missouri’s 1.2 million customers. While the plant will be down, Cox said customers will not notice any difference in service.