AKRON, Ohio, Oct. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- FirstEnergy
Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC), a subsidiary of FirstEnergy
Corp. (NYSE: FE), announced its Beaver Valley Power Station Unit 1
in Shippingport, Pa., returned to
service at 8:52 a.m. this morning
following a September 24, 2016,
shutdown for refueling and maintenance. The 939-megawatt
plant is currently operating at approximately 25 percent power and
is expected to reach full power in the next week.
While the unit was shut down, one-third of the plant's 157 fuel
assemblies were exchanged. In addition, numerous inspections
and preventive maintenance and improvement projects were completed
to ensure continued safe and reliable operations, including
examinations of the unit's reactor head, turbine, electrical
generator and three steam generators.
Prior to the outage, Beaver Valley Unit 1 operated safely and
reliably, generating more than 10.5 million megawatt hours of
electricity since the completion of its last refueling in May
2015.
FirstEnergy Corp. is headquartered in Akron, Ohio. Its FENOC subsidiary also
operates the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Perry, Ohio, and the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power
Station in Oak Harbor, Ohio.
Visit FENOC on the web at www.fenoc.com, and follow the nuclear
plants on Twitter: @BVPowerStation, @Perry_Plant, and
@DavisBesse.
Forward-Looking Statements: This news release includes
forward-looking statements based on information currently available
to management. Such statements are subject to certain risks and
uncertainties. These statements include declarations regarding
management's intents, beliefs and current expectations. These
statements typically contain, but are not limited to, the terms
"anticipate," "potential," "expect," "forecast," "target," "will,"
"intend," "believe," "project," "estimate," "plan" and similar
words. Forward-looking statements involve estimates, assumptions,
known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may
cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially
different from any future results, performance or achievements
expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, which may
include the following: the speed and nature of increased
competition in the electric utility industry, in general, and the
retail sales market in particular; the ability to experience growth
in the Regulated Distribution and Regulated Transmission segments;
the accomplishment of our regulatory and operational goals in
connection with our transmission investment plan, including, but
not limited to, the proposed transmission asset transfer to
Mid-Atlantic Interstate Transmission, LLC, and the effectiveness of
our strategy to reflect a more regulated business profile; changes
in assumptions regarding economic conditions within our
territories, assessment of the reliability of our transmission
system, or the availability of capital or other resources
supporting identified transmission investment opportunities; the
impact of the regulatory process and resulting outcomes on the
matters at the federal level and in the various states in which we
do business including, but not limited to, matters related to rates
and the Electric Security Plan IV; the impact of the federal
regulatory process on Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
(FERC)-regulated entities and transactions, in particular FERC
regulation of wholesale energy and capacity markets, including PJM
Interconnection, L.L.C. (PJM) markets and FERC-jurisdictional
wholesale transactions; FERC regulation of cost-of-service rates,
including FERC Opinion No. 531's revised Return on Equity
methodology for FERC-jurisdictional wholesale generation and
transmission utility service; and FERC's compliance and enforcement
activity, including compliance and enforcement activity related to
North American Electric Reliability Corporation's mandatory
reliability standards; the uncertainties of various cost recovery
and cost allocation issues resulting from American Transmission
Systems, Incorporated's realignment into PJM; economic or weather
conditions affecting future sales and margins such as a polar
vortex or other significant weather events, and all associated
regulatory events or actions; changing energy, capacity and
commodity market prices including, but not limited to, coal,
natural gas and oil prices, and their availability and impact on
margins and asset valuations, including without limitation
impairments thereon; the risks and uncertainties at the CES
segment, including FES, related to continued depressed wholesale
energy and capacity markets, including the potential need to
deactivate or sell additional generating units; the continued
ability of our regulated utilities to recover their costs; costs
being higher than anticipated and the success of our policies to
control costs and to mitigate low energy, capacity and market
prices; other legislative and regulatory changes, and revised
environmental requirements, including, but not limited to, the
effects of the United States Environmental Protection Agency's
Clean Power Plan, Coal Combustion Residuals regulations,
Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and Mercury and Air Toxics Standards
programs, including our estimated costs of compliance, Clean Water
Act (CWA) waste water effluent limitations for power plants, and
CWA 316(b) water intake regulation; the uncertainty of the timing
and amounts of the capital expenditures that may arise in
connection with any litigation, including New Source Review
litigation, or potential regulatory initiatives or rulemakings
(including that such initiatives or rulemakings could result in our
decision to deactivate or idle certain generating units); the
uncertainties associated with the deactivation of certain older
regulated and competitive fossil units, including the impact on
vendor commitments, such as long-term fuel and transportation
agreements, and as it relates to the reliability of the
transmission grid, the timing thereof; the impact of other future
changes to the operational status or availability of our generating
units and any capacity performance charges associated with unit
unavailability; adverse regulatory or legal decisions and outcomes
with respect to our nuclear operations (including, but not limited
to, the revocation or non-renewal of necessary licenses, approvals
or operating permits by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or as a
result of the incident at Japan's
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant); issues arising from the
indications of cracking in the shield building at Davis-Besse; the
risks and uncertainties associated with litigation, arbitration,
mediation and like proceedings, including, but not limited to, any
such proceedings related to vendor commitments, such as long-term
fuel and transportation agreements; the impact of labor disruptions
by our unionized workforce; replacement power costs being higher
than anticipated or not fully hedged; the ability to comply with
applicable state and federal reliability standards and energy
efficiency and peak demand reduction mandates; changes in
customers' demand for power, including, but not limited to, changes
resulting from the implementation of state and federal energy
efficiency and peak demand reduction mandates; the ability to
accomplish or realize anticipated benefits from strategic and
financial goals, including, but not limited to, the ability to
continue to reduce costs and to successfully execute our financial
plans designed to improve our credit metrics and strengthen our
balance sheet through, among other actions, our cash flow
improvement plan and other proposed capital raising initiatives;
our ability to improve electric commodity margins and the impact
of, among other factors, the increased cost of fuel and fuel
transportation on such margins; changing market conditions that
could affect the measurement of certain liabilities and the value
of assets held in our Nuclear Decommissioning Trusts, pension
trusts and other trust funds, and cause us and/or our subsidiaries
to make additional contributions sooner, or in amounts that are
larger than currently anticipated; the impact of changes to
material accounting policies; the ability to access the public
securities and other capital and credit markets in accordance with
our financial plans, the cost of such capital and overall condition
of the capital and credit markets affecting us and our
subsidiaries; actions that may be taken by credit rating agencies
that could negatively affect us and/or our subsidiaries' access to
financing, increase the costs thereof, and increase requirements to
post additional collateral to support outstanding commodity
positions, letters of credit and other financial guarantees;
changes in national and regional economic conditions affecting us,
our subsidiaries and/or our major industrial and commercial
customers, and other counterparties with which we do business,
including fuel suppliers; the impact of any changes in tax laws or
regulations or adverse tax audit results or rulings; issues
concerning the stability of domestic and foreign financial
institutions and counterparties with which we do business; the
risks associated with cyber-attacks and other disruptions to our
information technology system that may compromise our generation,
transmission and/or distribution services and data security
breaches of sensitive data, intellectual property and proprietary
or personally identifiable information regarding our business,
employees, shareholders, customers, suppliers, business partners
and other individuals in our data centers and on our networks; and
the risks and other factors discussed from time to time in our
United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, and
other similar factors. The foregoing factors should not be
construed as exhaustive and should be read in conjunction with the
other cautionary statements and risks that are included in our
filings with the SEC, including but not limited to the most recent
Annual Report on Form 10-K and any subsequent Quarterly Reports on
Form 10-Q. New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not
possible for management to predict all such factors, nor assess the
impact of any such factor on our business or the extent to which
any factor, or combination of factors, may cause results to differ
materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements.
FirstEnergy expressly disclaims any current intention to update,
except as required by law, any forward-looking statements contained
herein as a result of new information, future events or
otherwise.
www.firstenergycorp.com
To view the original version on PR Newswire,
visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/beaver-valley-power-station-unit-1-returns-to-service-following-refueling-and-maintenance-outage-300350686.html
SOURCE FirstEnergy Corp.