Nov 3 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Asjylyn Loder St. Petersburg Times, Fla.

No need to reach for those anti-radiation pills. The hustle and bustle around Progress Energy's nuclear power plant is just routine maintenance.

The Crystal River nuclear plant will shut down within a week for refueling, and nearly 1,000 temporary workers have flooded local hotels, restaurants and RV parks to help out.

In the parlance of the nuclear industry, it's called an outage. Although it's routine, it carries high stakes for the utility's bottom line. Every day Crystal River remains offline, it costs Progress Energy more than $1-million to rely on its other plants, said spokeswoman Carla Groleau.

For competitive reasons, Progress Energy doesn't talk about the start and end date of outages, or the cost of the project. However, the industry average for outages runs about a month, Groleau said. Preparation begins months in advance, and workers are scheduled around the clock until the plant comes back online, she said.

On a recent afternoon, neatly labeled piles of spare parts and scaffolding crowded the Crystal River complex. Contract workers bustled through the plant, while workers staked out their desks in the temporary outage command center.

Progress Energy will remove a portion of the radioactive fuel and replace it to "refuel" the reactor.

In the meantime, welders, electricians and machinists will paint, replace valves and maintain parts of the plant that can't be worked on while the reactor is running.

The spent radioactive fuel will be stored on the site, which is west of U.S. 19 in the northwest corner of Citrus County.

"We store our spent fuel underwater in pools on site, as we have safely done for decades," said Progress spokeswoman Cherie Jacobs. Customers should not notice any difference in the reliability of their electricity.

To ensure safety, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has two resident inspectors at the plant year-round, said Ken Clark, NRC spokesman.

A scheduled outage like this one does not require stepped-up safety inspections, although the resident inspectors will make sure that the proper safety procedures are followed.