River Bend 1 trips offline, unscheduled outage underway

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River Bend 1, St. Francisville, Louisiana.

River Bend 1 began an unscheduled forced short outage on August 1, 2026. This event ended a streak of 256 days of operation without an unscheduled outage at the 968-MW General Electric BWR/6 facility.

The unit has recorded one forced outage so far in 2026, compared to four forced outages during the 2025 calendar year. Entergy Louisiana operates this unit and one other nuclear unit in the United States. Across the industry, the current fleet capacity factor is 98.6 percent among 94 units, with one unit currently in an unscheduled outage and zero units in refueling. The facility has been in commercial operation since 1986.

ST. FRANCISVILLE, LA. River Bend 1 entered an unscheduled outage on Aug 1, 2026. The NRC has not yet issued an event notification for this trip; a follow-up reply will be posted here if one is filed.

This is the first unscheduled outage of 2026 for the unit, which had 4 unscheduled outages in all of 2025.

Across the U.S. fleet of 94 commercial reactors, today's combined capacity factor is 98.6% (1 unit in an unscheduled outage), above the 97.9% baseline for this month over the past five years. While the unit is down, that takes about 774,000 homes' worth of generation off the grid.

River Bend 1 is a 968-MW General Electric BWR/6 operated by Entergy Louisiana (commercial operation since 1986). The utility operates 1 other U.S. nuclear unit. Its operating license runs through 2045 (renewed in 2018).

View River Bend 1's ratings, history, projections, and current status on NukeWorker. This thread will be updated when the unit returns to service.

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

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River Bend 1 returned to service on August 8, 2026, following an eight-day forced extended outage. The 968-MW General Electric BWR/6 unit had been offline since August 1, 2026, marking the first forced outage for the facility during the 2026 calendar year.

This return to service follows four forced outages recorded at the unit throughout 2025. Entergy Louisiana operates River Bend 1 and one other nuclear unit in the United States. Across the national fleet of 94 units, the current capacity factor is 97.9 percent. At the time of this event, only one other unit, Millstone 2, remained in an unscheduled outage.

River Bend 1 returned to service on Aug 8, 2026 after a 8-day unscheduled outage that began on Aug 1, 2026. A multi-day outage in this range typically points to a single equipment fix rather than a major component issue.

NukeWorker's projection had this at about 5 days at outage start; actual was 3 days longer.

The 8-day outage removed roughly 171,000 MWh from the grid, worth approximately $7 million at recent wholesale prices, equivalent to a year's electricity for about 16,000 homes.

View River Bend 1's ratings, history, projections, and current status on NukeWorker.

Want the full picture? Subscribe to the NukeWorker outage schedule for every current and upcoming U.S. nuclear outage.

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