The 44-day outage was six days longer than scheduled.
So how did it go?
"The short answer is good but not great," said Energy Northwest spokesman Brad Peck.
He said the quality of the work was strong, but some level of disappointment lingers over not making the targeted restart date.
"The schedule is what it is," he said. "There's no value in taking shortcuts."
The true gauge of the outage's success may be in what comes next. Prior refueling outages have been marred by unplanned outages that have occurred shortly after the plant was brought back online.
Energy Northwest hopes the plant is primed for another long run like the 486-day record streak that ended last October.
About 1,900 temporary and contract workers were brought on site to help out with the outage. Crews shuffled nuclear fuel assemblies, replacing about one-third of them, and performed maintenance that can't be done while the plant is running.
Major projects included replacing the hydraulic control system that regulates flow through the turbines. Two 90-ton heat exchangers that regulate the temperature of the water being injected into the reactor core were replaced. And improvements were made to an emergency high-pressure spray system that would spray the reactor with water should a leak develop elsewhere.
In a news release, Bonneville Power Administration's Andy Rapacz said the federal power marketer that buys all of the plant's power is "thrilled to have the plant back on line. We look forward to a long and reliable operating cycle."
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