The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has approved a $4.9 billion plan to complete a nuclear unit at its Bellefonte site, near Hollywood, Alabama.   The plant is about 55% complete and is expected to go into operation by 2020.  TVA’s nuclear plants, at Browns Ferry, near Athens, Alabama; Sequoyah, in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, and Watts Bar, near Spring City, Tennessee. have 6.6 GW of generation capacity, about 30 percent of TVA’s total electric power capacity.  TVA is the US’s largest publically owned power provider.

TVA expects that lessons learned from the Fukushima nuclear situation will be incorporated in Bellefonte’s construction.   The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been evaluating the Japanese event and is providing details that will aid in improving the operation, design and features of TVA’s nuclear facilities.  Based on the Fukushima experience, TVA will focus at Bellefonte on preparing for “stacked events”, such as an earthquake and a flood, and assuring the site will have the necessary equipment operational and available.  TVA remains interested in potentially licensing one or more advanced nuclear reactors at the site and continues to support the NRC’s licensing of the Westinghouse AP1000 technology. 

One of TVA’s motivations for investing in nuclear energy is to increase the supply of electric power without increasing emissions.

Westinghouse AP1000

The Advanced Passive 1000 (AP1000) design is a pressurized-water reactor (PWR) with passive safety features.  Passive safety means that the reactor is designed so that in case of failure it will fail to a safe state (cold shutdown) with a minimum of active intervention and no external power.  The reactors at Fukushima, which were designed and built in the early 1970’s, are GE boiling water reactors and require off-site power for active cooling in case of failure.

Earlier this month Westinghouse Electric Company, a group company of Toshiba Corporation, received notification from the NRC that it is issuing its Final Safety Evaluation Report on the AP1000 pressurized water reactor.  This is the second time that the AP1000 PWR design has gone through the Design Certification process with the NRC.  The first time the NRC granted Design Certification to the AP1000 in 2006.  Since then, the AP1000 design has been modified to meet new and additional NRC requirements, including those that require the design to withstand the impact of an aircraft crash on its shield building.   The passive safety systems of the AP1000 design are intended to enable it to safely shutdown with no, or minimal, operator action and no AC power.