Fox 28: South Bend, Elkhart IN News, Weather, SportsCook nuclear plant achieves a first in the country

Cook nuclear plant achieves a first in the country

It's the first nuclear plant in the country to have two fully-integrated control room simulators.  We're talking about A.E.P.'s Cook Nuclear Plant in Bridgman.

Cook officials say about three years ago they started looking at the areas demographics and knew they needed to train more operators. To do that, they invested $13 million dollars to build a second simulator.  Cook's original simulator was always in such high demand they were frequently scheduling training around the clock.

Joe Jensen, Senior Vice President & Chief Nuclear Officer of A.E.P.'s Cook Nuclear Power Plant says, "In order to train the operators for the very unlikely scenarios that may occur, we need a training facility, such as this, so we can put 'em through their paces."

Eighteen local and regional businesses did work on the project.  Edgewater Automation built the new simulator. They've done complex wiring jobs before, but nothing like this. For Edgewater and other local companies, the work came at just the right time. 

Rick Blake, the President of Edgewater Automation says, "A big part of our business is the auto business and that was way down and because of that, this job fit in perfectly with what we needed. It kept over a dozen of our guys busy throughout the winter when otherwise it would've been very difficult for us to find work for all of them, so it was perfect for us." 

Training a reactor operator can take up to 18 months.