BRIDGMAN — Indiana Michigan Power’s Cook Nuclear Plant will transport three 175-ton and three 75-ton retired turbine casings from the plant to a barge on the St. Joseph River.

The late-night trips will take place during the last two weeks in August.

An 88-wheeled heavy-haul vehicle, moving about six miles per hour, will travel on Thornton Road, Notre Dame Avenue, Marquette Woods Road, Red Arrow Highway, Lakeshore Drive and across the Blossomland Bridge. The casings will be staged at the LaFarge Terminal before placement on a barge and transport to Tennessee for scrap.

Each of the six moves will have law enforcement escort and require utility crews to move wires and other interferences along the route. Each trip will begin at approximately 11 p.m. and take five hours.

The shipments are classified as low-level radioactive waste because there is a minor amount of fixed contamination, barely above background radiation levels, in crevices inside casings. The department of transportation requires radioactive markings on each shipment, but no special precautions will be required of the transport workers or the public during shipment or staging.

“Over the years, we have moved several oversized components on similar routes,” said Bill Schalk, Cook communications manager. “We will follow all the requirements for a low-level radioactive shipment, but the levels are essentially negligible.”

Replacing the original unit two turbines was a $250 million project that was completed during a refueling outage last fall as part of the plant’s $1.16 billion Life Cycle Management Project. The new turbines increased the unit’s output by almost eight percent. During operation, the turbine casings encompass the rotors and direct the steam through the blades.

The 200-foot long barge will be docked outside the LaFarge Terminal for approximately one week while the casings are loaded.

The 10-day trip will take the barge through the locks in Chicago to the Illinois River, then down the Mississippi River and finally to the UniTech facility in Oakridge, Tennessee. Once there, the casings will be decontaminated and the metal recycled.