News Releases

Operators at PPL's Susquehanna nuclear power plant safely restarted the Unit 1 reactor this morning (11/14) after successfully completing a maintenance outage to improve the operation of the unit's control rod system.

The plant shut down Oct. 28 because routine testing indicated that some of the unit's control rods and fuel assemblies were experiencing increased friction, slowing their response time. Other nuclear plants in the United States have had similar issues.

"We resolved the friction issues using a combination of techniques developed at other plants. Repeated testing shows the control rods are now responding normally," said Bob Saccone, vice president-Nuclear Operations. "This outage demonstrates our commitment to identify potential equipment reliability issues and address them before they have a chance to affect plant safety and reliability."

The unit came back on line almost a week earlier than originally planned. The plant's Unit 2 reactor operated at 100 percent power during the outage.

The Susquehanna plant, located in Luzerne County about seven miles north of Berwick, Pa., is owned jointly by PPL Susquehanna, LLC and Allegheny Electric Cooperative Inc. and is operated by PPL Susquehanna.

Susquehanna is one of PPL Corporation's generating facilities. Headquartered in Allentown, Pa., PPL Corporation (NYSE: PPL) controls about 12,000 megawatts of generating capacity in the United States, sells energy in key U.S. markets and delivers electricity to nearly 5 million customers in Pennsylvania, the United Kingdom and Latin America. More information is available at http://www.pplweb.com/.

SOURCE: PPL Corporation

CONTACT: Lou Ramos, PPL Corporation, +1-570-759-2285, Fax:
+1-610-774-5281

Web site: http://www.pplweb.com/