Up for sale on Monday: A fixer-upper nuclear power plant in Alabama that has already cost its owners about $5 billion and more than 40 years of time, but is still $8 billion short of completion, according to a recent estimate.
Media reports say there is one known bidder for the Tennessee Valley Authority's Bellefonte nuclear power plant that was begun in the 1970s, but remains far from complete. There are two units at the site out of four once planned and they were considered 88 percent and 58 percent completed at the time work was halted. But that was some years ago with no significant progress done at the site since the 1980s. In addition, valuable assets have been pirated from the site for use elsewhere, giving rise to new estimates that consider the two units 55 percent and 35 percent completed, respectively.
The minimum bid for the property in an auction that starts Monday is $36 million. One energy company called Phoenix Energy has already placed a $38 million bid on the 1,600 acre Hollywood, Ala., property that includes office buildings, a helicopter pad, railroad spurs, transmission lines, miles of paved roads and other infrastructure.
The current history of the site is as much about fits and starts and frustration as anything. Once expected to be a source of jobs for 1,000 or more permanent workers, the TVA had, as recently as 2013, made plans to finish one or both of the already begun reactors. By 2015, however, the power company had given up on completion, choosing, instead, to study alternative uses, including a sale.
Tellingly, the empty parking lot on the site has room for 1,000 cars, according to a media report.
According to the AP, Phoenix Energy is an electricity generation company out of Nevada that uses electromagnetic induction energy fields to create steam to turn turbines.
The TVA is expected to announce the results of the sale in October.