Beaver Valley 2 completes Spring refueling outage in 29 days

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Beaver Valley 2 finished its refueling outage in 29 days, completing the work one day ahead of the 30-day schedule. This duration is 4.6 days faster than the 33.6-day average of the unit's 18 prior refuels. The unit entered this maintenance period following an unscheduled-outage-free streak of 2790 days.

29 days outage · 1 day ahead of schedule · 901 MW back online

Beaver Valley 2 resumed power production on May 3, 2026 after a 29-day Spring 2026 refueling outage that began Apr 5, 2026.

The published schedule had it at 30 days (Apr 11, 2026 to May 11, 2026), so the actual ran 1 day shorter than planned.

Going into the refueling, the unit had run for more than 7 years without an unscheduled outage.

The 29-day outage removed roughly 577,000 MWh from the grid, worth approximately $23 million at recent wholesale prices, equivalent to a year's electricity for about 53,000 homes.

Across the U.S. fleet of 94 commercial reactors, today's combined capacity factor is 91.3% (5 currently in refueling), above the 87.0% baseline for this month over the past five years. At the same site, Beaver Valley 1 is running at full power. Palo Verde 2, Susquehanna 1, Braidwood 2, and Arkansas Nuclear 2 also completed refueling outages within the past week.

Beaver Valley 2 is a 901-MW Westinghouse 3-loop PWR operated by Energy Harbor Nuclear Generation (commercial operation since 1987). At full power, it supplies enough electricity for roughly 721,000 homes. The utility operates 3 other U.S. nuclear units. Its operating license runs through 2047 (renewed in 2009). The unit ran at a 98.6% capacity factor in 2025, among the unit's strongest cycles.

View Beaver Valley 2'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.