When Point Beach Unit 1 was shut down February 18 after a component in the reactor's cooling system failed, it marked the first time since 1969 in which Wisconsin's nuclear plants did not produce a single kilowatt-hour of electricity. Wisconsin's nuclear-free holiday will likely continue until June.

 Wisconsin Electric Power Company (WEPCO), which operates the twin-reactor Point Beach power plant, had initially expected to repair Unit 1 and restart it by mid-March and operate it until its scheduled refueling outage on May 9. WEPCO has since decided to delay restarting Unit 1 until after Unit 2 brought into compliance with NRC safety requirements.

 WEPCO is seeking a 1.4 mill ($.0014) rate increase to cover, among other things, unanticipated costs associated with the extended outages at Units 1 and 2. WEPCO asked the Commission to approve the rate increase by mid-April.

 To serve eastern Wisconsin's strongly summer-peaking peak load, WEPCO is looking to resume operating Unit 2 in mid-June and Unit 1 by the July 4th holiday. Between the ongoing Kewaunee outage and the likelihood that several of Commonwealth Edison's nuclear generators in the Chicago area will be out of service this summer, the eastern Wisconsin grid will have little tolerance for plant outages during this summer's heat waves, even with both Point Beach units back at full strength.