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Energy NW Wash Columbia Reactor Ramps Up to Full Power by Joe Silha Reuters, February 17, 2009

NEW YORK - Energy Northwest's 1,131-megawatt Columbia nuclear power station in Washington State ramped up to full capacity as of early Tuesday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in its daily plant status report.

On Friday, the unit was operating at 1 percent power as it started to exit a Feb. 8 outage, likely due to a problem with a system that regulates steam flow across the main turbine.

Columbia Generating Station, which entered service in 1984, is located in Richland in Benton County about 145 miles southwest of Spokane.

One MW powers about 800 homes in Washington State.

Energy Northwest, of Richland, Washington, is a joint operating company comprising 24 member utilities that owns and operates nearly 1,300 MW of generating capacity, which it supplies to the utilities.