Waterford Nuclear Generating Station

The Waterford Steam Electric Station, Unit 3, also known as Waterford 3, is a nuclear power plant located on a 3000 acre plot in Killona, Louisiana, in St. Charles Parish, about 25 mi west of New Orleans.

This plant has one Combustion Engineering two-loop pressurized water reactor. The plant has a maximum dependable capacity of 1,152 megawatts of electricity. The power station's main generator is rated at 1333.2 MVA at a 0.9 power factor (60 psi hydrogen pressure). In 2005, the plant was approved for a 8% (275 MWt) power uprate. The post-uprate nominal main generator output was rated at 1231 MW.

The reactor has a dry ambient pressure containment building.

On August 28, 2005, Waterford shut down due to Hurricane Katrina approaching and declared an unusual event, the least-serious of a four-level emergency classification scale. Shortly after Katrina, Waterford restarted and resumed normal operation.

During the 2011 Mississippi River floods, the plant was shut down briefly after a refueling shutdown on April 6, but was restarted on May 12.

The plant shut down on October 17, 2012, for steam-generator replacement. The plant returned to full power in the middle of January 2013.

The plant shut down on August 28, 2021 in preparation for Hurricane Ida. On August 29, 2021 the plant declared an “unusual event″ — its lowest level of emergency — after the facility lost offsite electrical power.

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 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 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 50 mi was 1,969,431, a decrease of 0.8 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include New Orleans (33 miles to city center).

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.