Brunswick Nuclear Generating Station


The Brunswick nuclear power plant, named for Brunswick County, North Carolina, covers at above sea level about from the Atlantic Ocean. The site is adjacent to the town of Southport, North Carolina, and to wetlands and woodlands, and was opened in 1975.
The site contains two General Electric boiling water reactors, which are cooled by water collected from the Cape Fear River and discharged into the Atlantic Ocean.
Duke Energy Progress is the majority owner and operator of the Brunswick nuclear plant. The North Carolina Eastern Municipal Power Agency owns the remaining 18.3%. Duke Energy Progress is currently in the process of buying The North Carolina Eastern Municipal Power Agency's 18.3% Stake at Brunswick nuclear power plant.
The Brunswick plants' proximity to the Cape Fear River and the Atlantic Ocean allowed the designers to take in cooling water from the Cape Fear river and discharge it into the Atlantic off the coast of Oak Island. Fish, crustaceans, and other debris are removed from the cooling water via a filtration system. The water then flows through the nuclear plant and discharges into a five mile long canal which passes under the Intra-Coastal Waterway at one point.

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 Brunswick was 36,413, an increase of 105.3 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 468,953, an increase of 39.6 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Wilmington.

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 Brunswick was 1 in 66,667, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.

Hurricane Florence

The two reactors at Brunswick were shut down on Thursday, September 13, 2018, prior to tropical storm-force winds from Hurricane Florence impacting the plant. Of the nine nuclear power plants in the path of Hurricane Florence, Brunswick was the only nuclear power plant shutdown.