Waterford Nuclear Generating Station


The Waterford Steam Electric Station, Unit 3, also known as Waterford 3, is a nuclear power plant located on a plot in Killona, Louisiana, in St. Charles Parish.
This plant has one Combustion Engineering two-loop pressurized water reactor. The plant produces 1,240 megawatts of electricity since the site's last refuel in March 2019. It has a dry ambient pressure containment building.
On August 28, 2005, Waterford shut down due to Hurricane Katrina approaching and declared an . Shortly after Katrina, Waterford restarted and resumed normal operation.
During the 2011 Mississippi River floods, the power plant, which is located about west of New Orleans, was restarted on May 12, after a refueling shutdown on April 6.
The plant also shut down on October 17, 2012, for steam-generator replacement. The plant returned to full power in the middle of January 2013.

Ownership

Waterford is operated by Entergy Nuclear and is owned by Entergy Louisiana, Inc.

Surrounding population

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of, concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, and an ingestion pathway zone of about, concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity.
The 2010 U.S. population within of Waterford was 75,538, an increase of 7.4 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 1,969,431, a decrease of 0.8 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include New Orleans.

Seismic risk

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at Waterford was 1 in 50,000, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.