DTE Mich. Fermi 2 reactor back at full power

NEW YORK, June 16 (Reuters) - DTE Energy Co's (DTE.N) 1,122-megawatt Unit 2 at the Fermi power station in Michigan returned to full power by early Tuesday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report.

Operators took the unit off line during the weekend due to a small leak on the non-nuclear side of the plant in one of the plant's 14 drywell coolers.

Workers took the cooler out of service. The company said the plant can operate at full power with the remaining 13 coolers in service.

The company plans to fix the leaky cooler during the next refueling outage in the fall of 2010.

The 1,173 MW Fermi station is located in Newport in Monroe County, about 30 miles southwest of Detroit. There are several units at the station including Unit 2, which entered service in 1988, and four 12 and 13 MW oil-fired turbines (1966).

In 2008, DTE filed with the NRC to build one of General Electric Co (GE.N)/Hitachi Ltd's (6501.T) 1,550 MW Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactors (ESBWR) at Fermi.

Using an industry estimate of $3,300 per kilowatt, the new reactor could cost about $5.1 billion.

One MW powers about 800 homes in Michigan.

DTE, of Detroit, owns and operates about 11,000 MW of generation, markets energy commodities and distributes power to 2.2 million customers and gas to 1.2 million in Michigan. (Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by John Picinich)