SCRIBA, N.Y. - The refueling outage at the Unit 2 reactor at Nine Mile Point nuclear station provides a rare opportunity to go inside the plant while the reactor vessel is opened up.

Photographers from Syracuse.com took advantage of that opportunity last week. Their photos and video of the refueling floor, the turbine building and other areas provide an inside view of the plant that most people see only from the outside.

Some 1,500 extra workers have been at the plant since April 11, when operators took it offline for a refueling that is conducted every two years. During the outage, about one-third of the uranium fuel inside the reactor vessel is replaced and moved to the spent fuel pool.

Plant owner Exelon Corp. also conducts maintenance work during the outage that cannot be done while the plant is running.

Among other tasks, crews have been working to finish up installation of a new hardened vent system that would remove hydrogen from the reactor building in the event of a serious accident. Federal regulators require the vents to be installed in certain types of reactors, in response to the hydrogen explosions that occurred during the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan.

The vent project will be finished during the outage, but the project has taken more than a year altogether, said Jim Culeton, mechanical supervisor for CB&I, a contractor.

Culeton, a pipefitter, said he has spent about 90 percent of his career working at nuclear plants. He still marvels at their size and complexity.

"It's quite a feat, this nuclear,'' he said. "It's very well-engineered.''

Exelon's two reactors at Nine Mile Point employ 925 permanent workers, with an annual payroll of $119 million.

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