Nine Mile Point 1 & 2 and Fitzpatrick Nuclear Power Plants

Fitzpatrick & Nine Mile Point - Scriba, New York

About 7 miles northeast of Oswego, New York on Lake Ontario are 3 General Electric Boiling Water Reactor facilities.

Nine Mile Point 1 is owned/operated by Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation.
Nine Mile Point 2 is operated by Niagara Mohawk, but has 4 other owners - NY State Electric & Gas, Long Island Lighting Company, Rochester Gas and Electric, and Central Hudson Gas & Electric.
Fitzpatrick is owned/operated by the New York Power Authority (which also owns and operates Indian Point 3).

The 3 units share a common visitor center which overlooks the area. Typically each reactor is refueled every 18-24 months. At that time about 1/4 to 1/3 of the fuel is replaced after having been in the reactor for 4.5 to 6 years. The following describes each unit.

Nine Mile Point Unit 1, to the left below, is the older BWR-4 design with drywell and torus. The unit is rated at 1850 MWt and 610 MWe net output.

Nine Mile Point 1 has the folllowing characteristics:

532 fuel assemblies, each containing 62 fuel rods per assembly.
129 cruciform shaped boron carbide control rods are used to shape power and provide the emergency shutdown, if needed.
Core total uranium dioxide fuel weighs 105 tons. Of this, approximately 2.8 tons is the fissionable U-235.
Drywell is 118 feet high, 70 feet in diameter, and has a liner of 0.7 to 2.625 inches thick that is capable of a diesgn pressure of 62 pounds per square inch.
The turbine generator shaft rotates at 1800 rpm and the generator output voltage is 24,000 volts.

The condenser is cooled by Lake Ontario water, which flows at 250,000 gallons per minute. Within the condenser the maximum temperature rise for the cooling water is 36F, while the maximum lake surface temperature increase at the discharge point is 11F.

Nine Mile Point Unit 2 is a newer BWR-5 design with a drywell and suppression pool design. NMP2 is rated at 3323 MWt and 1080 MWe net output. The core has 764 fuel assemblies and 185 control rods. Uranium dioxide fuel wieght is about 150 tons.

The drywell is 106 feet high, 91 feet in diameter, and 3/8-inch thick. The surrounding concrete is 5 feet thick.

The steam, condensate, feedwater, and electrical systems are similar to unit 1 except for larger size or rating.

Unit 2 uses a natural draft cooling tower to remove heat from the warm water that leaves the plant's condenser. The cooling tower is 543 feet high, eavporates about 25,000 gpm of the total 580,000 gpm that pass through the condesner. Makeup is from Lake Ontario.

Click to see photos of the inside and outside of a typical BWR or for graphics (including a touch-sensitive image-map) of typical BWR building layouts.

The Fitzpatrick unit is rated at 2436 MWt and 816 MWe net output. The unit's condenser is cooled by Lake Ontario water, similar to Nine Mile Point 1.

The unit is similar to the Nine Mile Point units, except for:

560 fuel assemblies and 155 tons uranium dioxide total
137 control rods
Drywell height 111 feet 4-3/4 inches
Drywell diameter 65 feet
Steel liner thickness 3/4 to 1-1/2 inches
Drywell design pressure 56 pounds per quare inch
Maximum lake surface temperature increase 3F
Maximum condenser temperature increase 32.4F
Cooling water 360,000 gallons per minute.

References provided by Niagara Mohawk and NY Power Authority.