Dive Brief:

• The Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) is returning the 563-MW Fort Calhoun nuclear plant to service after the facility sat idle for almost three years.
• The plant near Omaha, Nebraska, was taken offline in April 2011 for a refueling outage. It was damaged when the Missouri River flooded. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) then found safety violations at the plant.
• OPPD has spent about $177 million to return the plant to operations.

Dive Insight:

“OPPD has used up its get-out-of-jail-free cards,” said David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists. “If a problem emerges, the NRC will view it more critically and react more forcefully than they would elsewhere.”

OPPD hired Exelon Generation in 2012 to manage the Fort Calhoun plant under a 20-year contract.