Middletown, Pa. - Maybe you noticed there's no plume of steam coming from Three Mile Island anymore. The plant is shut down for an extreme nuclear makeover.

Not only is there no steam coming from the cooling towers at TMI, there are lots of people working on them.

"We're doing work on one of our cooling towers, which will increase the efficiency of our plant by about three megawatts," said T-M-I Spokesman Ralph DeSantis. "Which is a pretty big jump in power."

But the big deal at the plant is installing those steam generators that arrived from France about a month ago. Behind the black netting on the containment building, a 26-by-26-foot hole is being cut through solid concrete, using high pressure water.

"We expect that maybe our neighbors across the river, west of us in Goldsboro and Newberry Township, possibly might hear some of that noise," said DeSantis. "We don't expect it to be tremendously loud but it might be something they notice."

It will take about a week just to cut the huge hole. An 800-ton crane will then be used to remove the old generators and install the new ones.

The plant is also being refueled and dozens of valves are being replaced. It all adds up to lots of jobs - about 2,500 additional, supplemental jobs, according to DeSantis.

 

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