Workers at Xcel Energy’s Prairie Island Minnesota Nuclear Plant have completed a weeks-long refueling and maintenance effort, allowing the facility to continue providing reliable, carbon-free energy for more than one million customers throughout the Upper Midwest and remain an economic engine for the region.

During the refueling, nearly 500 specialists joined the plant’s full-time workforce. The work helped set up the plant for a future extension of its operations, which will play an important part in achieving Minnesota’s clean energy goals.

“Nuclear energy is essential to achieving Minnesota’s vision to power communities with 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2040,” according to Ryan Long, President, Xcel Energy – Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. “Our continued investment in nuclear ensures we can provide reliable, always-available clean energy to customers across the Upper Midwest for many years to come.”

Refueling happens every two years for each of the two units at Prairie Island. While Prairie Island’s Unit 2 is out of service, refueling and plant maintenance will improve equipment and plant reliability and help ensure that the plant continues to provide safe, clean and reliable power to the region. During this outage, Unit 1 will continue operations to provide electricity to customers.

Together, Prairie Island and Xcel Energy’s nuclear plants at Monticello provide 23 percent of the total electricity that the company’s customers use in the Upper Midwest.