U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., urges TVA to increase output by finishing or building a total of four reactors at the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant site
– Edited by Stephen Heiser –
According to a report in the Chattanooga Times Free Press, U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., urged the Tennessee Valley Authority to nearly double its nuclear power generation by finishing or building a total of four reactors at the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant site.
"This is a fabulous technological engineering facility," The Senator said after recently touring the half-finished Bellefonte plant. "I am more motivated than ever to see this facility operate and am more confident than ever that it will."
The Alabama Republican, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said TVA will need what he said will be "clean and safe" power from more nuclear reactors in Alabama. Senator Sessions urged TVA to finish the original two reactors it started building in 1974 and add the next generation of reactors on the same site. "There is just no doubt that this will save money for the people in this region," he added.
President Obama will appoint members to both the TVA board and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this year, and those panels could shape how much investment in nuclear power is made in the Tennessee Valley. The Obama administration has not been clear about rapid deployment of nuclear reprocessing facilities and raised more questions about licensing the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage plant.
NRC Commissioner Kristine Svinicki said federal regulators have tried to be more responsive in the past ten years to those whom the NRC regulates. She added that she was impressed by TVA's "very deliberate manner in which they are looking at every component" of those plants it is reviving and finishing. TVA now operates six reactors and plans to finish another reactor in Tennessee in the next three years.
TVA suspended construction at the original twin-reactor complex here in 1988 when the growth in power demand slowed and plant building costs increased. In 2006, TVA ultimately scrapped plans to ever finish the original reactors in favor of building a newer simpler and less costly AP1000 from Westinghouse Corp.