Turkey Point 3 back online after 97-day outage (trip rolled into refuel)

[Outage Wire]

97 days outage · 69 days past schedule · 837 MW back online

Turkey Point 3 resumed power production on May 11, 2026 after a 97-day Spring 2026 refueling outage that began Feb 4, 2026.

The published schedule had it at 28 days (Mar 7, 2026 to Apr 4, 2026), so the actual ran 69 days longer than planned. NukeWorker's predictive model anticipated about 32 days based on the unit's recent cycles, with the actual 65 days longer than that projection.

The outage began with an unplanned trip on Feb 4, 2026, about 31 days before the planned outage. The unit remained offline through the scheduled refueling that followed, which explains the long duration.

It is the unit's second-longest refueling outage of 18 cycles tracked since 2000. Prior to the trip, the unit had run for more than 4 years without an unscheduled outage.

The 97-day outage removed roughly 1.79 million MWh from the grid, worth approximately $72 million at recent wholesale prices, equivalent to a year's electricity for about 166,000 homes.

Across the U.S. fleet of 94 commercial reactors, today's combined capacity factor is 85.6% (9 currently in refueling, 2 in unscheduled outages), below the 87.0% baseline for this month over the past five years. At the same site, Turkey Point 4 is running at full power. Fermi 2, Palisades, Surry 2, and Millstone 2 also completed refueling outages within the past week.

Turkey Point 3 is an 837-MW Westinghouse 3-loop PWR operated by Florida Power & Light (commercial operation since 1972). At full power, it supplies enough electricity for roughly 670,000 homes. The utility operates 3 other U.S. nuclear units. Its operating license runs through 2052 (renewed in 2002). The unit ran at a 99.4% capacity factor in 2025, among the unit's strongest cycles.

View Turkey Point 3's ratings, history, predictions, and current status on NukeWorker.

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Sources: NRC Daily Reactor Power Status reports, utility-published outage schedules, and NukeWorker's predictive model.