A quarterly update on the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar 2 completion project forecasts that the reactor remains on track to become the first new unit brought online in the U.S. since 1996.
Work restarted in 2008 after the nearly complete reactor had been mothballed for 23 years. TVA reported this week that key systems testing remains underway, and that plant construction and upgrades are now more than 90 percent finished. Start-up testing has generated delays resulting from equipment failures, longer times required for system flushing and complications arising from testing systems shared between the two units at the site. Additionally, incomplete work and documentation were discovered for some previously released systems, requiring an additional 160,000 construction hours to address. Nonetheless, TVA still expects work on the reactor will likely be complete by next December at a cost of $4.2 billion that is within previous targets.
About 3,100 people are currently working on Watts Bar 2 and have met the 1,000-work-hour requirement to be eligible for a project completion bonus. The incentives are contingent on the project budget coming in at or below $4.4 billion, with the reactor ready to enter commercial service by Dec. 31, 2015.
A full copy of the quarterly report is available here.