Exelon Peach Bottom 3 reactor up to 73 pct power

NEW YORK Oct 15 (Reuters) - Exelon Corp's (EXC.N) 1,112-megawatt Unit 3 at the Peach Bottom nuclear power station in Pennsylvania ramped up to 73 percent by early Thursday from 33 percent early Wednesday after exiting a refueling outage, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a release.

The unit shut for the refueling on Sept. 13.

During the outage, the company said, workers replaced about a third of the uranium fuel, installed new electrical windings in the main generator and replaced one of the six main power transformers.

The company said it planned to replace all of its main power transformers by 2011.

To help with the outage, Exelon used more than 2,000 workers in addition to the plant's usual work force.

It last shut for refueling from about Sept. 23 to Oct. 17, 2007. The unit is on a 24-month refueling cycle.

The 2,224 MW Peach Bottom station, which entered service in 1974, is located in Peach Bottom in York County, about 75 miles southwest of Philadelphia. It has two 1,112 MW units, 2 and 3. The NRC renewed the plant's original 40-year operating licenses in 2003 for another 20 years until 2033 and 2034.

Unit 2 continued to operate at full power.

One MW powers about 800 homes in Pennsylvania.

Exelon Nuclear, a unit of Exelon's Exelon Generation Co LLC subsidiary, operates the station for its owners: Exelon (50 percent) and Public Service Enterprise Group Inc (PEG.N) (50 percent).

Exelon, of Chicago, owns and operates more than 38,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes electricity to about 5.4 million customers in northern Illinois and southeast Pennsylvania and natural gas to about 480,000 the Philadelphia area.

PSEG, of Newark, New Jersey, owns and operates more than 16,500 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes electricity to 2.1 million customers and natural gas to 1.7 million customers in New Jersey and another 2.9 million customers around the world. (Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by John Picinich)