Exelon Ill. LaSalle 1 reactor starts to exit outage

NEW YORK, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Exelon Corp's (EXC.N) 1,118-megawatt Unit 1 at the LaSalle nuclear power station in Illinois started to exit an outage and ramped up to 3 percent power by early Thursday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report.

The unit shut by Sept. 29 for work on the main generator.

The 2,238 MW LaSalle station, which entered service in 1984, is located in Seneca LaSalle County, about 70 miles southwest of Chicago. There are two units at the station, the 1,118 MW Unit 1 and 1,120 MW Unit 2.

Unit 2 continued to operate at full power.

One MW powers about 800 homes in Illinois.

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. (Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by John Picinich)