Wolf Creek Generating Station


Wolf Creek Generating Station, a nuclear power plant located near Burlington, Kansas, occupies 9,818 acres of the total controlled by the owner. Wolf Creek, dammed to create Coffey County Lake, provides not only the name, but water for the condensers.
This plant has one Westinghouse pressurized water reactor which came on line on June 4, 1985. The reactor was rated at 1,170 MW. A new turbine generator rotor was installed in 2011 that increased electrical output to approximately 1250 MW. The reactor output remained unchanged at 3565 MW
On October 4, 2006, the operator applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a renewal and extension of the plant's operating license.
The NRC granted the renewal on November 20, 2008, extending the license from forty years to sixty.
The nuclear plant was a target of an unsuccessful cyberattack by hackers in 2017.

Ownership

The Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, a Delaware corporation, operates the power plant.
The ownership is divided between the Evergy, and Kansas Electric Power Cooperative, 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 Wolf Creek was 5,466, a decrease of 2.8 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 176,656, a decrease of 1.7 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Emporia.

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 Wolf Creek was 0.0019%, or 1 in 55,556, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.