Fort St. Vrain Generating Station

Fort Saint Vrain Generating Station is a natural gas powered electricity generating facility located near the town of Platteville in northern Colorado in the United States. It currently has a capacity of just under 1000MW and is owned and operated by Xcel Energy, the successor to the plant's founder, the Public Service Company of Colorado. It went online in this form in 1996.The facility was built originally as a nuclear power plant. It operated as a nuclear generating power plant from 1979 until 1989.Historical overviewFort Saint Vrain Generating Station was built as Colorado's first and only nuclear power plant and operated as such from 1979 until 1989. It was one of two high temperature gas cooled (HTGR) power reactors in the United States. The primary coolant was helium which transferred heat to a water based secondary coolant system to drive steam generators. The reactor fuel was a combination of fissile uranium and fertile thorium microspheres dispersed within a prismatic graphite matrix. The reactor had an electrical power output of 330MW (330 MWe), generated from a thermal power 842 MW (842 MWth).