Dave Flessner reports that more than four decades after its start, the Tennessee Valley Authority expects to complete a second reactor at its Watts Bar Nuclear Plant by the end of the year. TVA President Bill Johnson said that work on the Unit 2 reactor remains on budget and on schedule to be the first new U.S. reactor to come on line in the 21st century.
TVA expects to begin commercial power generation at the new unit at Watts Bar by December, Johnson said. TVA plans to conduct hot functional testing in March and expects regulators to begin their operational readiness assessment of the plant this spring to allow nuclear fuel to be loaded by this summer and generation to begin sometime between September 2015 and June 2016.
Johnson also said the work is now expected to cost about 4.2 billion dollars since TVA reactivated work on the reactor five years ago. TVA expects to spend about 1 billion dollars on Watts Bar Unit 2 in the current fiscal year as part of the utility record high 3.5 billion dollars capital spending budget this year.
TVA originally began building Watts Bar in 1974. Work was halted in 1988 after employee safety concerns were raised about the way the plant was built. TVA resumed work on the unit in the 1990s and finished Unit 1 in 1996 at a cost of more than 6 billion dollars.
Because TVA started the project prior to EPA releasing its new Clean Air rules, TVA may not get carbon credits for the new reactor unless the rules are modified. TVA is urging EPA to revise its standards so that TVA use of Watts Bar, which does not release any carbon dioxide, can be counted in its efforts to reduce carbon emissions in the Tennessee Valley.
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