The only commercial nuclear power plant in the US Pacific Northwest is set for a $700m (€617m) uprate that would add nearly 200 MW of generation capacity.

The single-unit Columbia nuclear power station in Richland, Washington, with a capacity of 1,207 MW, will undergo an extended power uprate that will be done during the plant’s next three biennial spring refuelling outages in 2027, 2029 and 2031.

The project is a collaboration of Energy Northwest, which owns and operates the boiling water reactor facility, and the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), the federal agency which approved the project.