The Tennessee Valley Authority has reassigned executives working on the Watts Bar 2 and Bellefonte reactor completion projects following a review of issues at Watts Bar.
The later project’s construction vice president, Dave Stinson, was moved to the Bellefonte project to lead engineering and infrastructure planning, while current Bellefonte manager Ray Hruby will now oversee Watts Bar 2’s overall project work, licensing and safety. Joining him will be former TVA COO and chief nuclear officer O.J. “Ike” Zeringue, who will serve as a project manager for engineering and construction.
The moves follow recent regulatory filings that indicate work at Tennessee’s Watts Bar 2, which was abandoned about 80 percent complete in the late 1980s, will likely not be finished this year and will incur costs “expected to significantly exceed the previous estimate of $2.5 billion.” Further, a significant delay on that project could postpone the start of work on another partially built reactor at Bellefonte in Alabama.
In August, TVA undertook a review of the Watts Bar project, and a TVA release Friday said its leadership will make further recommendations within the next quarter.
“We are putting in place a highly skilled, experienced team in nuclear construction and project management as we develop our completion plan for unit 2 at Watts Bar,” senior vice president of nuclear construction Mike Skaggs said in the release. “These steps also ensure we have a strong leadership team in place to keep an appropriate focus on the planning phase at Bellefonte and that we share knowledge and effectively incorporate lessons learned from Watts Bar unit 2.”