Tennessee Valley Authority to Pursue 2 New Reactors

SPRING CITY, Tenn., Jan. 28 -- The Tennessee Valley Authority will submit applications to build two new nuclear reactors under the government's streamlined licensing process and restart its oldest reactor after a 22-year shutdown at Browns Ferry, TVA officials told the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

The public utility also plans to decide by August whether to spend up to $2 billion to complete the unfinished Unit 2 reactor at Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, the newspaper reported Sunday.

The total cost could exceed $7 billion for design and construction, officials said.

No new nuclear reactors have been ordered in the United States since a 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania raised public concerns about nuclear power and caused the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to revamp its rules.

But industry officials believe concerns about global warming have changed attitudes about nuclear energy. Nationwide, U.S. utilities are pursuing plans for up to 31 new reactors.

Proponents say nuclear power is an attractive alternative to coal, which is blamed for contributing to global warming and air pollution. Nuclear energy also provides an alternative to natural gas, which has been buffeted by high and volatile prices.

The Bush administration and some Republican lawmakers also are touting the resurgence of nuclear energy, along with a reprocessing and recycling technology for highly radioactive spent fuel waste, a process not previously used in the United States.

"Nuclear power is almost the only answer for clean electricity to meet our growing needs," said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who is co-chairman of the TVA Congressional Caucus and a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "When I look at all of the options, I think nuclear is the leading technology."

The TVA estimates electricity demand will grow 1.9 percent a year. To meet all of that increase with nuclear reactors would require the TVA to nearly double its nuclear generation in the next decade.

But critics question the safety and cost of the plan. Nearly 30 years ago, the TVA scrapped most of what then was the nation's most costly and ambitious nuclear program.

"Of all the places on Earth that have given nuclear power a shot and failed, the Tennessee Valley has got to be number one," said S. David Freeman, a former TVA chairman who has headed four other electric utilities across the country.

The 74-year-old utility sank more than $8 billion in the 1970s and 1980s into 10 nuclear reactors that were canceled before they were finished. The TVA spent an additional $6 billion to build the first reactor at Watts Bar, making it the most expensive nuclear plant of its size.

The TVA provides wholesale electricity to 158 distributors serving 8 million consumers in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.