TVA OKs second Watts Bar nuclear reactor

KNOXVILLE,Tenn.-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.The reactor will have a capacity of 1,180 megawatts,capable of lighting 650,000 homes,identical to Unit 1.The project would add 250 workers to the Watts Bar station and require about 2,300 construction workers.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.Watts Bar Unit 2 would be TVA's seventh nuclear reactor. The agency recently restarted a Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant reactor in Alabama, also mothballed since 1985, following a $1.8 billion, five-year renovation.Several environmentalists asked TVA directors to delay a vote on Watts Bar Unit 2 for a year to weigh the alternatives, while local government leaders, TVA distributors and major industrial customers, including the Oak Ridge National Laboratory,urged TVA to move ahead.TVA officials didn't discuss the nuclear waste issue. Instead, they pointed to Watts Bar Unit 2's potential to reduce TVA's carbon dioxide emissions by up to 8 million tons a year.TVA Chairman Bill Sansom said the new reactor could put TVA in position to eliminate some dirty coal-fired power plants-TVA has 11 fossil plants on which it is spending some $6 billion to reduce toxic emissions-if demand for electricity fails to meet projections.Currently,TVA is predicting growth in the valley at nearly 2 percent annually.That would require a new nuclear reactor every couple of years unless TVA's new commitments to incentive-driven conservation pan out.TVA President and CEO Tom Kilgore said the agency can't afford to wait.TVA expects to spend $1.4 billion of some $9.6 billion in operating expenses next year on buying electricity from other utilities to meet peak needs - up nearly $400,000 from this year."We are 3,500 megawatts in the hole if you start today," he said. "We are going to be another 3,500 megawatts in the hole five years from now. We are going to need this (Watts Bar Unit 2) and all the conservation that 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.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.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/AP/story/189249.html
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