River Bend supplies the residents of Louisiana with approximately 30% of their electricity. The station also provides residents with over 600 full-time jobs and has improved living conditions in the surrounding area with high achieving academic schools with generous donations made to the local areas. The station has been recognized as a high achieving site by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, INPO, and WANO. River Bend has some of the highest performing employees in the industry in all departments. Behind the day-to-day operation of the station is a highly achieved Operations department. While all departments are important to the safe operation of the station, the operators are the ones who day in and day out monitor and control the plant in a safe manner to make safe and reliable electricity for the citizens of Louisiana. These operators are generally hired in as non licensed field operators who perform work outside of the control room. After years of successful employment as a non licensed operator, the most qualified and best performing individuals are selected to attend training to become a licensed reactor operator. This two-year program is extremely challenging and involves rigorous studying and simulator training to make it through NRC generic fundamentals all the way through to the NRC license exam. Many have attempted to gain a license but it is not for everyone and some do not make it. For the ones who do make it, they proudly hold their license issued by the NRC and are in elite company as they are the most highly trained employees of the plant and are responsible for every action taken at the plant to ensure safe and reliable operation. Once licensed, the operator must maintain satisfactory standing with their license by successfully completing a written and performance evaluation every five weeks along with an annual written exam and job evaluation.
Units 2 and 3
The River Bend site was originally designed to have two identical units. Construction on Unit 1 began in 1973, but Unit 2 barely broke ground, with only the containment base mat and some underground piping installed. In 1984, plans to construct Unit 2 were officially abandoned. On September 25, 2008, Entergy filed a Combined Construction and Operating License application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for Unit 3, a new nuclear reactor at River Bend. The 1550 MWeEconomic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor was the selected design.The reactor's cost was estimated at $6.2 billion. On January 9, 2009, Entergy indefinitely postponed work towards the license and construction of Unit 3.
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 River Bend was 23,466, an increase of 11.1 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 951,103, an increase of 11.2 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Baton Rouge.
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 River Bend was 1 in 40,000, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.
