Citrus County Crane Training Around the Crystal River Energy Complex

Building one plant, dismantling another

Duke Energy Florida's Citrus Combined Cycle Station started construction in March 2016 and brought its two 820-megawatt power blocks online in October and November 2018, at a cost of roughly $1.5 billion. It's fed by the Sabal Trail pipeline and replaced generation from two 1960s-era coal units and the shuttered nuclear unit.

That nuclear unit, Crystal River 3, is being decommissioned by Accelerated Decommissioning Partners, which took over the license in 2020. Reactor vessel segmentation finished in December 2023, most site buildings have been taken down to grade, and reporting in May 2026 said demolition of the reactor building was due to finish by the end of that August, with a license termination plan under NRC review.

Building a power block and tearing down a containment are opposite jobs that use the same skills: heavy-lift planning, multi-crane coordination, tight radius control and careful rigging of loads whose weight and center of gravity have to be calculated rather than read off a tag. Demolition adds the challenge of lifting pieces that aren't designed to be lifted.

The Parkway keeps coming north

Suncoast Parkway 2 reached SR 44 earlier, and a three-mile segment from SR 44 to CR 486 (Norvell Bryant Highway) opened in August 2025, about 500 days ahead of schedule. The next pieces are bigger: a roughly $244 million phase from CR 486 to CR 495, which began in mid-2025 and is expected to run several years, and a roughly $192 million final phase to US 19 near Red Level that was scheduled to start in mid-2026.

That's years of bridge girders, overpasses, drainage structures and sign gantries in the county. It's steady work for crawler and hydraulic crane operators and for riggers who set precast.

Springs, rivers and coastal ground

Western Citrus is a low coast of springs, rivers and marsh around Crystal River and Homosassa, and the interior has lakes and karst ridges. Soft organic soils near the water and voids in the limestone inland both call for ground checks before a heavy setup. Waterfront jobs such as seawalls, docks and marina work sometimes use cranes on barges or on mats at the shoreline.

Afternoon summer thunderstorms are routine, so plan to be finished, or at least secured, before the lightning starts.

Credentials that fit Citrus County jobs

Florida doesn't license crane operators, so the federal requirements explained in our Florida requirements guide are what count on private projects here.

• Power plant outages and demolition: mobile crane operator plus Rigger Level 2 for complex and multi-crane picks.
• Parkway bridges and overpasses: operator certification, Level II rigging and a qualified signal person on every girder set.
• Long-time operators nearing the five-year mark: mobile crane recertification.
• Waterfront and seawall contractors: operator certification plus rigging, since loads often land out of the operator's view.