[NukeNet] Alabama Plant Reopening Marks Nuclear Resurgence?

[Diane Farsetta]

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/41736/story.htm

Alabama Plant Reopening Marks Nuclear Resurgence?
USA: May 7, 2007

LOS ANGELES - The Tennessee Valley Authority expects later this month  
to reopen a nuclear reactor that has been shut for 22 years,  
heralding what industry advocates call a US nuclear renaissance.

The reopening of the Browns Ferry Unit 1 near Huntsville, Alabama  
would make it the third operating reactor at the facility, turning it  
into the second-biggest nuclear power plant in the United States.

TVA spokesman Terry Johnson said the plant is expected to come on  
line in mid-May, subject to tests at the site.

"Virtually all of the physical work has been done," he told Reuters  
in a telephone interview on Friday. "As the components are tested,  
it's possible that things will show up that may take a couple of  
hours or a couple of days."

The reopening would mark the first addition to the US fleet of  
operating nuclear power reactors since 1996. Nuclear plants account  
for about 10 percent of US power generation.

While Browns Ferry Unit 1 -- which would be the 104th US operating  
reactor -- is not new, industry advocate Nuclear Energy Institute  
called its reopening the start of a US nuclear renaissance.

"I think this definitely marks the beginning," NEI spokesman Mitch  
Singer told Reuters. "When historians look back at this as the real  
first concrete beginning of the nuclear renaissance in the United  
States."

TVA, a federal agency, shut all its nuclear power plants in 1985  
because of poor management and the need for costly overhauls. While  
some reopened, Browns Ferry 1 did not.

The "No Nukes" campaign in the United States in the mid 1980s was  
bigger than it is now, when even some environmental groups see  
nuclear power as a way to make electricity without climate-changing  
greenhouse gas emissions.

Browns Ferry began operation in 1974 and just a year later, closed  
briefly after a worker using a candle to check for leaks in a small  
tunnel caused a fire that burned unchecked for seven hours. No one  
was injured and no radiation was released but it was a black eye for  
the TVA and Browns Ferry.

Singer said as many as 15 companies are planning 34 new nuclear power  
reactors, although none have yet filed for an operating license with  
the US Nuclear Regulatory Agency. No new licenses have been given  
since 1973.

The first new reactor is likely to open between 2014 and 2016, the  
NEI says.

In 2002, the TVA approved spending $1.8 billion to reopen the Browns  
Ferry reactor. When it opens, it will be able to serve about 650,000  
homes.

One of the plants where construction was stopped before it was ever  
opened was in Bellefonte in northern Alabama. The TVA ordered a halt  
to construction in 1988 at a time when it did not need the generating  
capacity.

The TVA brings power to more than 8 million homes and businesses in  
the Tennessee Valley region.