Fort St. Vrain Generating Station

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Fort Saint Vrain Generating Station is a natural gas powered electricity generating facility located near the town of Platteville in northern Colorado in the United States. It has a capacity of 720MW and is owned and operated by Xcel Energy (formerly the Public Service Company of Colorado). It went online in this form in 1996.

Originally, it was built as Colorado's first (and only) nuclear power plant and operated as such from 1979 until 1989. It was the only high temperature gas cooled (HTGR) power reactor in the United States. The primary coolant was helium that cannot get radioactive when irradiated by neutrons and it heated water through steam generators. The fuel cycle of the reactor was uranium-thorium and its power output was 300MW. The fuel elements had a hexagonal cross section and their energy density was low enough that loss of the primary coolant did not result in the reactor core overheating right away. The operators would have several hours to shut down the reactor before a damage to the core would occur.

This nuclear power plant was proposed in March 1965 and the application was filed with the Atomic Energy Commission in October 1966. Construction began in 1968. The containment building had a rectangular shape instead of the usual cylindrical domed buildings housing other reactors. The construction cost reached $200 million. Initial testing began in 1972 and the first commercial power was distributed in December 1976. The facility was a disappointment, however, and never lived up to expectation. It experienced many recurring problems with power fluctuations throughout its history, requiring extended shut-downs. Other problems included the jamming of a control rod and the leakage of water into the reactor core. As a result, the plant became too costly to operate and was closed in 1989. The decommissioning and removal of the fuel was completed by 1992. The first natural gas turbine was installed in 1996. Two more turbines were installed by 2001.