Buchanan, N.Y. – Workers at Entergy's Indian Point Energy Center will begin transferring spent fuel from unit 3's spent fuel pool to dry-cask storage on Sunday, September 16. These will be the first spent fuel assemblies removed from the unit 3 pool since the plant first produced power in 1975.

Entergy began moving spent fuel from unit 2's spent fuel pool to dry cask storage in 2007. There are 448 assemblies from unit 2 and 160 assemblies from unit 1 currently stored in 19 casks on the storage pad on site. The storage pad has been operating since 2007.

“The movement of spent fuel from the unit 3 pool to dry cask storage is an historic milestone and an important step that allows unit 3 to continue operating well into the future,” said John Ventosa, site vice-president at Indian Point and Entergy's top official at the plant.

The removal of spent fuel from the pool makes space available and allows the most recently used fuel to be stored in the pool. Workers anticipate moving 192 spent fuel assemblies from the unit 3 pool to the unit 2 pool, and 96 assemblies to dry cask storage over the next several months.

The process for moving spent fuel from unit 3 differs from the process used at unit 2, and required approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That approval was received by Entergy in July.

The building that houses the spent fuel pool at unit 3 is not able to accommodate the large crane needed to lift the dry cask storage containers. Therefore a smaller, lighter canister was designed for use by the smaller unit 3 crane.

Workers will place twelve spent fuel assemblies in a canister filled with water and transport it on a roadway from unit 3 to unit 2. The fuel assemblies then will be taken out of the canister and placed into the unit 2 spent fuel pool. After eight canisters loaded with spent fuel have been unloaded into the unit 2 pool, ninety-six spent fuel assemblies will then be removed from the pool, loaded into three large dry cask storage containers, and transported to the outdoor pad. An additional eight canisters of spent fuel will be moved from the unit 3 pool to unit 2's pool to complete the transfer process prior to next year's refueling outage at unit 3.

There currently are five dry cask storage containers loaded with fuel from unit 1 and 14 dry cask storage containers loaded with fuel from unit 2 on the outdoor storage pad.

Indian Point Energy Center, in Buchanan, N.Y., is home to two operating nuclear power plants, unit 2 and unit 3, which generate approximately 2000 megawatts of electricity for homes, business and public facilities in New York City and Westchester County.

Entergy Corporation is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, including more than 10,000 megawatts of nuclear power, making it one of the nation's leading nuclear generators. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.8 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Entergy has annual revenues of more than $11 billion and approximately 15,000 employees.