AP News, August 1st, 2007
The Tennessee Valley Authority's board of directors voted unanimously Wednesday to begin a five-year plan to finish a second nuclear reactor at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant on the Tennessee River.
The plant, about 50 miles south of Knoxville at Spring City, was the last new nuclear plant to come on line in the United States when it fired up one of its two planned reactors in 1996.
The second reactor was mothballed in mid-construction in 1985 when TVA shut down its entire nuclear program over safety concerns.
The plan to finish it is expected to cost about $2.5 billion, likely funded by the public utility's revenues and adding debt. It was approved after a $20 million internal study on the feasibility of finishing the reactor determined it was already about 60 percent complete.
TVA is the nation's largest public utility, providing wholesale electricity through 158 distributors to about 8.7 million consumers and directly to several dozen large manufacturers in Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.
The plan has faced opposition from anti-nuclear advocates and environmentalists, who asked for a year's delay for further study.
Bill Sansom, chairman of the eight-member TVA board, said that future forecasts for power requirements in the utility's booming coverage area could require more nuclear projects, as well as increased conservation.
"This isn't 'either/or' as it comes to conservation," he said. "We need this and all the conservation you can bring on."
Watts Bar has a unique role as the only commercial reactor in the country that also works for the military _ making tritium for nuclear weapons for the Department of Energy since 2003. While Watts Bar Unit 2 is not expected to make tritium, security concerns remain for the site, especially during construction involving thousands of workers.
"There are a lot of people that will be in this fight," said Ann Harris, a former TVA whistleblower at Watts Bar and now an activist with the Sierra Club. "The anti-nuclears. The safety advocates. The people who work on conservation."
Opposition to Watts Bar Unit 1 was fierce. Whistleblower complaints forced large amounts of cabling and piping to be replaced, delaying the reactor and driving the cost to $7 billion. Protesters blocked plant entrances and demonstrators were removed from TVA board meetings.
"This time people will have a lot more knowledge," Harris said. "There are lots of opportunities to ask for public hearings, (to seek) injunctions and media that didn't exist before."
Watts Bar Unit 2 has a construction permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that will have to be renewed in 2010. Then TVA will have to secure an operating license.
___
On the Net
TVA: http://www.tva.gov
