At a Glance

Location:

On a 2,100-acre site in Salem Township, Luzerne County, Pa.
About seven miles northeast of Berwick, Pa.
About 20 miles southwest of Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
Down the hill from the plant and along the Susquehanna River is the Susquehanna Energy Information Center and PPL's Susquehanna Riverlands, a 1,200-acre nature preserve providing year-round outdoor recreation and environmental education opportunities.

Ownership:

PPL Susquehanna LLC owns 90 percent of the plant and operates it; Allegheny Electric Cooperative Inc. owns 10 percent.
PPL Susquehanna LLC is a subsidiary of PPL Generation LLC, which is a subsidiary of PPL Corporation. PPL Corporation, based in Allentown, Pa., controls more than 11,000 megawatts of generating capacity in the United States; sells energy in key U.S. markets; and delivers electricity to customers in Pennsylvania and the United Kingdom.
Allegheny Electric Cooperative, based in Harrisburg, Pa., provides power to member cooperatives in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Allegheny purchased 10 percent of the Susquehanna plant in 1977.

Operation:

The PPL Susquehanna plant Unit 1 reactor began commercial operation in 1983; Unit 2 in 1985.
The plant has two boiling water reactors made by General Electric Co.
Heat is produced by the splitting, or fissioning, of uranium (U235) atoms in the reactors, which makes steam that drives turbine-generators to produce electricity.
Each unit has a capacity of 1,180 megawatts of electricity; the plant's full output is about 53 million kilowatt-hours a day.
Two 540-foot cooling towers are used to cool the water used in the plant.

Employment:

During normal operation, about 1,100 full-time employees work at the plant in operations, maintenance, engineering and technical support positions and another 170 work in the Nuclear Department at PPL's Allentown headquarters.
About 2,000 people work at the plant during refueling outages. Each unit is shut down for refueling every 24 months, during which time about one-third of the uranium fuel in the reactor is replaced and other planned maintenance and inspection tasks are completed.