Beaver Valley Power Station is a

nuclear power plant A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a electric generator, generato ...

on the

Ohio River The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...

covering near

Shippingport Shippingport is a borough in western Beaver County, Pennsylvania, United States, located along the Ohio River. The population was 159 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. Shippingport is home to the Beaver Valley ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, roughly northwest of

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

. The Beaver Valley plant is operated by Energy Harbor and power is generated by two Westinghouse

pressurized water reactor A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a type of light-water reactor, light-water nuclear reactor. PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan and Canada). In a PWR, the primary ...

s. FirstEnergy announced that it expected to close Beaver Valley in 2021 without legislative relief or sale to another utility company. More recently, however, FirstEnergy announced that because of Governor Tom Wolf's decision to join the

Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, pronounced "Reggie") is the first mandatory market-based program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the United States. RGGI is a cooperative effort among the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, ...

the company intends to keep the facility in operation.

Electricity Production

Surrounding population

The

Nuclear Regulatory Commission The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy. Established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, the NRC began operat ...

defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of , concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne

radioactive contamination Radioactive contamination, also called radiological pollution, is the deposition of, or presence of radioactive substances on surfaces or within solids, liquids, or gases (including the human body), where their presence is unintended or undesirab ...

, and an ingestion pathway zone of about , concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity. The 2010 U.S. population within of Beaver Valley was 114,514, a decrease of 6.6 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 3,140,766, a decrease of 3.7 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Pittsburgh (27 miles away, located upriver from the station).

Seismic risk

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at Beaver Valley was Reactor 1: 1 in 20,833; Reactor 2: 1 in 45,455, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.

Fessenheim

Beaver Valley 1 was used as the reference design for the French nuclear plant at

Fessenheim Fessenheim (; gsw-FR, Fassene) is a commune in the Haut-Rhin department in Grand Est in north-eastern France. It is known for: * its hydroelectric power plant on the Grand Canal d'Alsace (built 1953–1956, inaugurated 1957); * the Fessenhei ...

.Thèse, publiée sur internet, de FOASSO Cyrille (Université Lumière Lyon2 - 2003) "Histoire de la sûreté de l'énergie nucléaire civile en France (1945-2000)" Le concept de centrale de référence : assurer les conditions d'un transfert de technologie optimum - "''Dans cet apprentissage de la technologie des réacteurs à eau légère, EDF s'appuie sur le concept dit de «centrale de référence», adopté pour suppléer à son manque de connaissances en profondeur de ce type de réacteurs. Le concept de centrale de référence marque une étape fondamentale dans l'opération de transfert de technologie depuis les Etats-Unis vers la France.''" "''pour Fessenheim c'est la centrale de Beaver Valley qui est choisie comme référence''"
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References

External links

* * * {{U.S. Nuclear Plants Energy infrastructure completed in 1976 Energy infrastructure completed in 1987 Buildings and structures in Beaver County, Pennsylvania Nuclear power plants in Pennsylvania Nuclear power stations using pressurized water reactors FirstEnergy 1976 establishments in Pennsylvania