Saint Lucie 2 completes Spring refuel in 48 days, caps 551-day B2B run

[News Wire]

Saint Lucie 2 completed a refueling outage in 48 days, exceeding its original 30-day schedule by 18 days. The unit entered this spring maintenance period following an unscheduled-outage-free streak of 664 days.

This 48-day duration ranks as the sixth-longest among the 18 tracked refuels for the unit. The result is 1.5 days below the 49.5-day average of the previous 17 refuels. Florida Power and Light operates this 987-MW COMB CE PWR alongside three other U.S. nuclear units. Across the industry, 94 units currently maintain a 97.3 percent capacity factor, with two other units, Palisades and Surry 2, also in outage.

48 days outage · 18 days past schedule · second B2B run complete · 987 MW back online

After 48 days offline for its Spring 2026 refueling outage, Saint Lucie 2 returned to the grid on Jun 4, 2026. The outage began on Apr 18, 2026.

The published schedule had it at 30 days (Apr 4, 2026 to May 4, 2026), so the actual ran 18 days longer than planned.

It also capped a 551-day breaker-to-breaker run, the unit's second qualified B2B run. Going into the refueling, the unit had run for about 22 months without an unscheduled outage.

The 48-day outage removed roughly 1.05 million MWh from the grid, worth approximately $42 million at recent wholesale prices, equivalent to a year's electricity for about 97,000 homes.

Across the U.S. fleet of 94 commercial reactors, today's combined capacity factor is 97.3% (1 currently in refueling, 1 in unscheduled outages), above the 95.3% baseline for this month over the past five years. At the same site, Saint Lucie 1 is running at full power. Palisades and Surry 2 also completed refueling outages within the past week.

Saint Lucie 2 is a 987-MW COMB CE PWR operated by Florida Power & Light (commercial operation since 1983). At full power, it supplies enough electricity for roughly 790,000 homes. The utility operates 3 other U.S. nuclear units. Its operating license runs through 2063 (renewed in 2026). The unit ran at a 100.0% capacity factor in 2025, among the unit's strongest cycles.

View Saint Lucie 2's ratings, history, projections, and current status on NukeWorker.

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