Wolf Creek Generating Station, a

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced b ...

plant located near

Burlington, Kansas Burlington is a city in and the county seat of Coffey County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 2,634. History Burlington was founded in 1857. It was named after Burlington, Vermont, the native ho ...

, occupies 9,818 acres (40 km²) of the total controlled by the owner. Wolf Creek, dammed to create Coffey County Lake (formerly Wolf Creek Lake), provides not only the name, but water for the condensers.

History

This plant has one 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 ...

that came on line on June 4, 1985. The reactor was rated at 1,170 MW(e). A new turbine generator rotor was installed in 2011 that increased electrical output to approximately 1250 MW(e). The reactor output remained unchanged at 3565 MW (th). On October 4, 2006, the operator applied to 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 ...

(NRC) for a renewal and extension of the plant's operating license. The NRC granted the renewal on November 20, 2008, extending the license from forty years to sixty. On Jan 13, 2012 at 2 p.m., due to a breaker failure and an unexplained loss of power to an electrical transformer, the plant experienced an automatic reactor trip and loss of offsite power that lasted 3 hours. The nuclear plant was a target of an unsuccessful

cyberattack A cyberattack is any offensive maneuver that targets computer information systems, computer networks, infrastructures, or personal computer devices. An attacker is a person or process that attempts to access data, functions, or other restricted ...

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...

s in 2017, leading to indictments in 2021.

Electricity Generation

Ownership

The Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, a

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...

corporation, operates the power plant. The ownership is divided between the

Evergy Evergy, Inc. is an American investor-owned utility (IOU) with publicly traded stock that has its headquarters in Topeka, Kansas, and in Kansas City, Missouri. The company was formed from a merger of Westar Energy of Topeka and Great Plains E ...

(94%), and Kansas Electric Power Cooperative, Inc. (6%).

Surrounding population

The

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, 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 Wolf Creek was 5,466, a decrease of 2.8 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 176,656, a decrease of 1.7 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Emporia (30 miles to city center).

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 Wolf Creek was 0.0019%, or 1 in 55,556, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.

References

External links

Official Website

Old Official Website (Archived)
(404) *

Energy Information Administration The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System responsible for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating energy information to promote sound policymaking, efficient markets, and publ ...

, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE): *
Wolf Creek Nuclear Power Plant, Kansas (April 26, 2012)
*
Kansas (estimates)
(version February 16, 2017) *

* {{U.S. nuclear plants Energy infrastructure completed in 1985 Buildings and structures in Coffey County, Kansas Nuclear power plants in Kansas Nuclear power stations using pressurized water reactors Evergy 1985 establishments in Kansas