[NukeNet] New Nuke Considered in Tennessee

[Mike Ewall]

http://www.al.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-23/115401836170110.xml&storylist=alabamanews

AP Interview: TVA set to pursue 2nd nuclear reactor at Watts Bar
7/27/2006, 11:32 a.m. CT
By DUNCAN MANSFIELD
The Associated Press	 	

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Valley Authority is ready to 
pursue completing a second nuclear reactor at its Watts Bar station — 
the site of the last nuclear plant to come on line in the United 
States — a top official said Thursday.

Directors of the nation's largest public utility will be asked Friday 
to approve $20 million for a "detailed engineering study on Watts Bar 
2 completion," TVA President and acting CEO Tom Kilgore told The 
Associated Press in an interview.

"That doesn't mean that they are deciding to do Watts Bar 2," he 
said. "It means that we are asking them to spend money so that we can 
decide how much it would cost."

Kilgore said a decision to finish the 1,160-megawatt reactor in 
Spring City, Tenn., about 50 miles south of Knoxville, would be 
independent of a consortium study into building a next-generation 
reactor at TVA's unfinished Bellefonte nuclear station in Alabama.

"We will compare it to probably a new coal plant, to other options on 
nuclear, such as Bellefonte," Kilgore said. "But it is not an 
either-or on Bellefonte. It is more of timing with Bellefonte. In 
other words, we could finish Watts Bar 2 faster than we could finish 
Bellefonte."

TVA believes it will need new base generation capacity by 2014.

Construction on the Watts Bar station stopped in 1985 with the rest 
of TVA's nuclear program because of safety concerns. Construction 
later resumed on Watts Bar 1, which came on line in 1996 — the last 
nuclear reactor to start up in the U.S.