Unit 1 at PG&E's Diablo Canyon Power Plant safely returns to full power following planned outage

June 25, 2012


AVILA BEACH, Calif.– Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) today announced that Unit 1 at Diablo Canyon Power Plant returned to full power on June 22, 2012, after a planned maintenance and refueling outage that began on April 23, 2012.

"The mark of a successful outage is measured by working safely, accomplishing our priorities and returning the unit to operational service, and that is exactly what happened," said PG&E Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer Ed Halpin. "This is a testament to our employees, as well as the nearly 1,000 contractors who came from all over the country to help complete this important work."

During the outage, employees and contractors performed more than 225,000 hours of inspections, maintenance and project work, including replacing a portion of the reactor fuel and installing a new digital process control system (PCS).

The PCS monitors and controls various systems and provides indications for the control room. The project upgraded the PCS from analog to digital, which increases redundancies for safety, reduces maintenance and further enhances PG&E's continued safe operation of the facility. Diablo Canyon is the first nuclear facility in the country to execute a PCS replacement of this extent.

"The work performed during this outage supports the utility's strong commitment to operate Diablo Canyon in a safe, reliable and efficient manner," said Site Vice President Jim Becker. "It also allows PG&E to continue delivering to our customers some of the nation's cleanest electricity, more than half of which comes from sources that are renewable or emit no greenhouse gases."

Diablo Canyon Power Plant is a nuclear power facility owned and operated by PG&E. Its two units together produce approximately 2,300 net megawatts of greenhouse-gas-free electricity, about 10 percent of all electricity generated in California, and enough energy to meet the needs of more than three million Northern and Central Californians.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric utilities in the United States. Based in San Francisco, with 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of the nation's cleanest energy to 15 million people in Northern and Central California. For more information, visit http://www.pge.com/about/newsroom/ and www.pgecurrents.com.