Nuclear Reactor Could Restart After 17 Year Shutdown

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama, May 17, 2002 (ENS) - The Tennessee Valley Authority has decided to seek permission to restart a reactor at the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant that was mothballed in 1985. On Thursday, the three member board of the federally owned utility approved a staff recommendation to return Unit 1, the oldest of the facilities three reactors, to service for another 20 years.

Calling it the best business decision to meet long term power needs in the Tennessee Valley, the TVA board authorized the utility's staff to ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a 20 year extension of the operating licenses for all three reactors at the North Alabama plant, and to begin work to recover Unit 1.

Two of the three nuclear reactors at Browns Ferry are now producing electricity; TVA wants to restart the third reactor. (Three photos courtesy TVA)

"Returning Browns Ferry 1 to service is the best business decision for TVA and its customers in terms of power supply, cost, generation mix, delivered cost of power and the environment," said TVA chair Glenn McCullough Jr. "This decision advances our National Energy Policy, which calls for the safe expansion of nuclear energy, and it meets our objective of providing affordable, reliable power to the people of the Tennessee Valley."

TVA says that engineering and planning estimates show that Unit 1 can be returned to operation safely, said TVA chief operating officer O.J. "Ike" Zeringue, who recommended approval of the restart to the board.

Citing a detailed engineering estimate presented to the Board in March, the power supply forecast, an environmental review and a financial analysis, Zeringue said that returning Browns Ferry Unit 1 to operation will reduce the cost to consumers of TVA's power, while causing no "significant, adverse" environmental impacts.

Restarting Unit 1 is expected to cost from $1.7 billion to $1.8 billion and will take five years to complete. TVA is still about $25.2 billion in debt from the original construction costs of its three nuclear power plants, built in the 1970s and 1980s.

Workers clean reactor feedwater pump turbine parts at Browns Ferry.

"I believe this is a wise business decision for TVA," said TVA director Bill Baxter, one of the three board members. "This investment will pay dividends for the families, businesses and industry of the Valley in the forms of low cost power, cleaner air and economic growth."

The two reactors now operating at Browns Ferry have set a number of records for continuous operating hours. Unit 1 has a history of problems, including a major fire in 1975 that caused major damage to the unit's safety systems just two years after it began operating.

All three Browns Ferry reactors were shut down in 1985 after engineers learned that the completed plants did not exactly match their blueprint designs. After several refinements were made, the plant's Unit 2 was restarted in 1991, and Unit 3 was restarted in 1996.

TVA said Unit 1 was left idle because its generating capacity was not needed at the time.

Now, the agency facing growing power demand in a region with a major air pollution problem. Restarting the Unit 1 reactor, which emits no smog producing pollutants, will help meet energy needs without adding more air pollution.

TVA worker Robert Smith logs the access of workers at Browns Ferry Unit 3. TVA wants to operate all the Browns Ferry units for another 20 years.

Approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the only official hurdle the TVA must cross before restarting Unit 1, but some conservation groups say they object to the proposal.

Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy in Knoxville, Tennessee, has long opposed the planned restart.

"The plan stinks," Smith said. "Unit 1 was designed to operate for 40 years, but now TVA wants to add another 20 years on top of that. And they want the unit to produce 300 megawatts more than it was designed for, 1,300 instead of 1,000 megawatts. It's a prescription for a serious problem."

TVA operates three nuclear power plants, including Browns Ferry in Alabama. (Map courtesy Energy Information Agency)

David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that petitioned the NRC in 1998 to revoke the operating license for Browns Ferry Unit 1, noted that no nuclear power plant in any nation has ever been restarted after such a long shutdown.

TVA, the nation's largest public power producer, provides power to large industries and 158 power distributors that serve 8.3 million consumers in seven southeastern states. The agency operates three nuclear power plants, 11 fossil fueled plants and 29 hydroelectric dams.