Detroit Edison begins restart of Fermi II plant

5/6/2006

NEWPORT, Mich. Detroit Edison Co. expects that its Fermi II nuclear plant in northern Monroe County will start producing electricity again this weekend and be back at full power sometime next week.

John Austerberry, a spokesman for the utility, said yesterday that a deliberately slow and conservative restart began Thursday night.

The reactor was at 10 percent power yesterday morning, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission records.

Nuclear reactors have to be at about 20 percent power for plants to be synchronized to the grid and start producing electricity.

FirstEnergy Corp. s Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ottawa County was listed at 100 percent power yesterday.

Both plants had been offline for refueling and maintenance. Fermi II s outage began March 25; Davis-Besse s started March 6.

The two plants are along the Lake Erie shoreline, each about 30 miles from Toledo.