Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station

Beaver Valley Power Station is a nuclear power plant on the Ohio River covering 1000 acre near Shippingport, Pennsylvania, United States, 27 miles roughly northwest of Pittsburgh. The plant is operated by Energy Harbor and power is generated by two Westinghouse pressurized water reactors. As of 2023, it is the fourth largest employer in Beaver County.

In 2018, previous owner FirstEnergy Solutions filed for bankruptcy and announced the plant would begin deactivation by 2021. However, upon emergence from bankruptcy in 2020 as new owner Energy Harbor, the shutdown of the plant was reversed largely due to then Governor Tom Wolf's decision to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

In 2023, it was announced that parent company Energy Harbor will be acquired by retail electricity and power generation company Vistra Corp, who is based in Irving, TX.

Surrounding population
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of 10 mi, concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, and an ingestion pathway zone of about 50 mi, concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity.

The 2010 U.S. population within 10 mi of Beaver Valley was 114,514, a decrease of 6.6 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within 50 mi was 3,140,766, a decrease of 3.7 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Pittsburgh (27 miles away, located upriver from the station).

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 Beaver Valley was Reactor 1: 1 in 20,833; Reactor 2: 1 in 45,455, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.

Fessenheim
Beaver Valley 1 was used as the reference design for the French nuclear plant at Fessenheim.