Unit 1 at the Susquehanna nuclear power plant near Berwick returned to service Friday(6/5) after completion of its 10th refueling and maintenance outage.

About 40 percent of the unit's uranium fuel was replaced during the outage, said Herbert D. Woodeshick, PP&L, Inc.'s special assistant to the president for Susquehanna.

In all, about 2,800 work items were completed while Unit 1 was shut down. At the peak of the outage, more than 1,500 PP&L employees and contractors were on site performing outage-related work. Among the projects completed were an inspection of one of the unit's three low-pressure turbines and installation of suction strainers in the suppression pool that provides water for emergency cooling systems.

"Industrial, nuclear and radiological safety performance during the outage was outstanding," Woodeshick noted. "Detailed and thorough planning in the months preceding the outage provided the basis for doing the work safely."

The outage, which began in mid-April, took 53 days to complete.

PP&L's long-term goal is to have refueling and maintenance outages that take less than 40 days, Woodeshick added. "We'll be conducting a thorough review of this outage to determine where improvements can be made in the future."

Other projects during the Unit 1 outage included installation of an integrated plant computer system, replacement of some steam and water piping, enhancements to the plant's fire protection systems, and modification of valves in the system that provides water for the reactor.

"Effective outages like this one ensure that Unit 1 at Susquehanna will safely generate the maximum amount of electricity from now until its next refueling outage in April 2000," Woodeshick said.

The Susquehanna plant, jointly owned by PP&L, Inc. and Allegheny Electric Cooperative, Inc., is located about five miles northeast of Berwick along Route 11.