More than 1,200 extra workers are now on site at the Cook nuclear power plant in Bridgman for Unit 2’s 28th refueling outage.

Cook plant spokesperson Bill Downey tells us the crews will be performing 9,000 total jobs at the facility in the coming weeks, and while they’re in town they serve as an economic boost just as the tourist season is ending.

But who are the workers? Downey says many are contractors.

“ A lot of them come from our local union houses, and then there are others who are kind of journeyman craft workers that travel around the country from outage to outage,” Downey said. “ They make a living at this.”

Downey says they’re the real nuclear professionals who know what to do and get right to it.

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