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| Thursday, September 2, 2010 |
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Bellefonte fate could be decided this spring
Published December 10, 2009
The Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors could decide by spring 2010 if a single-unit nuclear power plant will be built at its Bellefonte site near Scottsboro.
“We will likely ask the board to make a decision,” TVA media spokesperson Terry Johnson said Tuesday at an open house held at the Scottsboro-Goose Pond Civic Center to allow the public to provide input on the utility’s draft supplemental environmental impact study. “We do expect to make a recommendation in the March to May time frame.”
Johnson was among a number of TVA staff members that were available to answer questions and provide information to the public in a one-on-one setting. More than 100 people, including representatives of two environmental groups — Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and the Bellefonte Efficiency and Sustainability Team — attended.
The utility had experts on hand to discuss provision of the National Environmental Policy Act transmission upgrades, socioeconomics/air quality and meteorology, nuclear plant operation, including safety and security issues, project description, need for power, water quality and aquatic and terrestrial ecology.
TVA is considering three options for the 1,600-acre Bellefonte site where twin Babcock and Wilcox reactors sit unfinished after construction was halted in the late 1980s. The utility is reviewing completing one of the two original units for which it received construction permits in 1974, building a new Westinghouse AP1000 reactor or taking no action.
“We’re only looking at one unit in this round. We can only go so far out in the future with any certainty,” Johnson said.
Garry Morgan of Scottsboro, a member of BREDL and BEST said he enjoyed the meeting, but had not changed his opinion after discussing the plan with TVA personnel.
“We had a good discussion,” he said. “The difference in our opinion is where TVA needs to go with Bellefonte. I prefer that they go with a plan published in 1997 which recommended a natural gas conversion plant.”
Morgan’s group, which included seven other people, served coffee, tea, hot chocolate, apple cider and cookies from a tent set up just outside the entrance to the civic center. It also had literature available opposing TVA using the Bellefonte location for a nuclear facility.
TVA, as part of its Integrated Resource Plan, is currently evaluating Bellefonte in five areas, including the environmental review. The utility is also in the early stages of performing detailed scoping, estimating and planning (DSEP), studying the financial aspects including costs and financing options, risks and licensing issues and analyzing the Tennessee Valley’s need for additional power in the future.
“We are trying to determine — does it make sense,” Jacks Bailey, TVA vice president of Nuclear Generation Development, said. “We are in the process of doing that and public input is an important part of this project.”
Nuclear power is part of a mix TVA hopes will allow it to generate half its power from clean power by 2020.
Clean energy, according to the utility’s plan, releases low-or-zero amounts of carbon, sulfur and nitrogen into the air. The utility expects to have Watts Bar Unit 2 completed in 2012 to provide power and help meet its goals.
“We know for certain that we need one new reactor in the 2018-2020 time frame,” Bailey said. TVA wants to use “a mix of efficiency, renewable energy and gas” as part of its IRP. “Nuclear will have to be a piece” of meeting our goals.
The twin Babcock and Wilcox reactors were approximately 90 percent and 58 percent complete when TVA abandoned the project. Johnson said a better estimate today would be that Unit 1 is about 60 percent complete.
TVA used parts from the reactor unit for projects at its Browns Ferry, Sequoyah and Watts Bar facilities. It also sold parts to other utilities.
“We estimate it would cost between $3.5 - $4 billion to complete Unit 1 at Bellefonte,” Bailey said. “A new AP1000 reactor would cost between $4- $5 billion.”
Bailey said the Unit 1 reactor would provide power to approximately 60,000 more homes than an AP1000. In total, Unit 1 would produce enough energy to serve 600,000 homes.
Either nuclear option would provide TVA with distinct advantages. The work that has already been completed toward licensing the Babcock and Wilcox and AP1000 reactors will reduce the time and cost of bringing a single unit on line. It will also allow the utility to make the best use of its existing impacts and avoid larger capital outlays associated with locating a plant elsewhere.
Bailey’s group will provide the TVA Board with the environmental information, a detailed engineering and feasibility study, and input from reviewing agencies and public comments to help in the decision making process.
If either option is approved, Bailey said, engineering for the construction process would “ramp up” almost immediately and that construction could be expected to begin “about 2012 at the earliest.”
“Power planning wants another unit ready to go on line by December 2018,” he said.
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