Dave Flessner reports that a self-sustaining nuclear reaction was achieved Monday at the TVA Watts Bar Unit 2 reactor in one of the most significant milestones toward activating the first new U.S. nuclear power plant in the 21st century.
Licensed reactor operators at the newest unit at Watts Bar brought the reactor to a sustained fission reaction known as initial criticality at 2:16 a.m. EDT. Unit 2 is now generating heat under its own power and within the next couple of weeks should be brought to a power level sufficient to heat steam and generate electricity for the first time.
TVA expects the Unit 2 reactor to achieve 100% power and be declared complete and commercially viable by this summer, nearly 43 years after construction first began at Watts Bar. The TVA plant has been stopped and started several times over the past four decades due to changing power demands in the Tennessee Valley.
Once brought into TVA rate base this summer, the new reactor will require the federal utility to begin paying down the estimated $4.7 billion cost to complete the plant. But TVA Nuclear Chief Joe Grimes said that is still far less than the $14 billion expense of building new reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia or at V.C. Summer nuclear plant in South Carolina.
The startup of the Unit 2 reactor at the Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant near Spring City, Tenn., will add 1,411 megawatts of carbon-free electricity generation, or enough power to supply two cities the size of Chattanooga. It marks the first new nuclear plant to be added to the U.S. electricity grid in 20 years.
The newest Watts Bar reactor will help TVA replace coal-fired generation that TVA recently has or soon will shut down at its Widows Creek, Colbert, New Johnsonville and Paradise fossil fuel plants.
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