ST. LUCIE COUNTY, Fla. — WPTV had the rare opportunity to go inside the St. Lucie County Nuclear Power Plant on Thursday.
This year, the facility is celebrating 50 years of operation and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission just granted licenses for 20 more.
On Thursday, WPTV learned about operations inside the plant and spoke with people who keep the power on.
Watch report from Tyler Hatfield:
Our Tyler Hatfield listened to Alfred Phillips, a digital INC specialist.
"My job is to calibrate and make sure all the equipment used to work on the equipment that controls the reactor itself meets all the government standards and accuracies."
Phillips said he’s been working at the plant for nearly 20 years.
"You have million-dollar homes right down the street. We're here, but yet we're still invisible because what we do, we do it well,” .Phillips said.
Alfred’s son, Alfred Sinclair Phillips, followed his father's footsteps and works in the operations department.
"There's a pressure with it, but there's also a sense of pride,” Phillips said. “Knowing that my dad has worked his butt off and he's left an impact with the people here on his work to make this place better.”
WPTV learned from Carlos Santos, site vice president, how the plant generates power.
"The simplest way to put it is the reactor creates the heat," Santos said.
Santos said that heat comes from nuclear fission from uranium pellets stacked into rods inside the two units on site.
The heat from the rods builds up and produces steam, which travels into a secondary closed system into a turbine, which then generates power and produces electricity for the grid.
Back in August, the plant had to be manually shut down when three control rods dropped in the reactors core.
Florida Power & Light told WPTV at the time that there was no danger to staff or the public, and no one lost power.
But after 50 years, technology has changed how employees work. Nicholas Negron, associate innovation specialist, showed WPTV their robotic dog, Tritium.
"We've named them after nuclear isotopes,” Negron said. “We're utilizing the robot to go in and out of high radiation areas, increasing efficiency both around our heavy machinery and around the plant."
Negron said submersibles and drones are also used to inspect equipment
"Not only does that increase a lot of the time saving, but it's also substantial cost savings for potential materials,” Negron said.
This power plant produces 11 percent of FP&L’s power.
Phillips said he feels proud of the responsibility he has every day.
"You think about all the things in life you can be doing and " this is good,” Phillips said.
