Nuclear plant outage ends

Prairie Island nuclear plant is back to full power after a planned refueling outage ended early Tuesday morning, Xcel Energy reported.

The outage, which started at the end of February, allowed for crews to complete maintenance and replace one-third of Unit 2’s fuel. They also prepared the reactor for a new steam generator to be installed in 2013.

About 400 contractors joined the company’s 800 employees to do the work during the outage.