Slow and steady, giant generators to cross Chesco
Call it the Three Miles Per Hour Island move. It will take specialized trucking crews 17 days to haul two, 153-foot-long steam generators 65 miles across Southeastern Pennsylvania to the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg starting next week.
Call it the Three Miles Per Hour Island move.
It will take specialized trucking crews 17 days to haul two, 153-foot-long steam generators 65 miles across Southeastern Pennsylvania to the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg starting next week.
That is with a top speed of 3 miles per hour.
The operation, one of the largest of its type ever undertaken in the state, will be transporting the 510-ton generators from Port Deposit, Md., to the plant in Middletown, Pa., crossing through the southwestern tip of Chester County on Monday.
Each transport truck, including the generator and its parts, weighs 820 tons. The load is 24 feet high and 17 feet wide. The convoy will travel mostly two-lane roads, requiring temporary road closures and possibly short-term power outages as crews temporarily disconnect power lines in certain areas.
In Chester County, the transport will go along Route 1 in Nottingham and head northwest on Route 272.
At a news conference yesterday, Gov. Rendell said the project to move the generators had taken more than two years of planning and required retrofitting of utility lines and bridges in three counties.
"We've been extremely diligent in evaluating this plan and the route these enormous steam generators will travel," Rendell said. "I hope citizens will rest easy knowing that we have worked closely with the companies to verify that our infrastructure is protected and reinforced where necessary; to ensure that our environment is protected."
Rendell also emphasized that the generators contained no radioactive materials.
The French-made generators, which create steam to power the plant's turbines, are part of a $400 million upgrade at Three Mile Island – the plant best known for a partial meltdown in 1979 that resulted in the closing of a power unit at the plant.
Coordinating the move is AREVA NP Inc., a Virginia nuclear-service company that also designed and built the steam generators, along with Exelon Nuclear, which owns Three Mile Island.