The Tennessee Valley Authority reported consistent progress on the second unit at its Watts Bar nuclear plant Tuesday, and the project remains within its budget.
TVA has issued quarterly progress reports since its board added $1.5 billion to $2 billion to the project's budget and three years to its scheduled in April of 2012. The most recent report covered work from May through July of this year, and the federal utility reported that bulk construction is now in its final phase.
“The plant is approximately 80 percent complete, and we are focusing on completing and readying plant systems for preoperational testing,” Mike Skaggs, the TVA executive in charge of the project, said in a release.
The report estimated fuel loading will likely take place in June of 2015, followed by commercial operation in December. That's comfortably within the timeframe between September of 2015 and June of 2016 laid out in the project's revised schedule. Spending in 2013 is coming in at $562.6 million, which is $62.6 million over the budget for that fiscal year. Nonetheless, TVA still expects spending will fall within the $4 billion to $4.5 billion approved for the project.
"The spending was increased to better align expenditures with priorities. The major priorities were to increase the staffing levels of engineering and construction workers in order to support early completion, testing and turnover of selected systems to operations. This is the result of the project transitioning from mostly bulk construction work to a higher portion of work guided by system completion and testing," the report read.
Once completed, the Westinghouse pressurized water reactor near Chattanooga, Tenn., will generate 1,180 megawatts alongside unit 1.