The Tennessee Valley Authority said Wednesday that would accept public comment for a month on the possible sale of its 1,600-acre construction site near Hollywood, Ala., which includes two partially-built Babcock and Wilcox pressurized light water reactor facilities.
Since work on the reactors was suspended more than 20 years ago, TVA has been investing only the “minimum” in upkeep for the unfinished reactor construction site that was to be the Bellefonte Nuclear Generating Station in northeastern Alabama, said TVA President and Chief Executive Officer Bill Johnson.
The site was to include four reactors, but market conditions changed, prompting TVA to call off the project while the first two units were under construction. Some components for those first two reactors have been put to use at other sites. At the time construction was halted, Unit 1 was 88 percent complete, while Unit 2 was 58 percent complete.
The assets on the property, which would be sold at auction, include 500-kV and 161 kV switchyards, office buildings and warehouses, parking lots, a training center, railroad spurs and a helicopter landing pad.
TVA said the site could still be put to use as a nuclear power plant, as well, but Johnson said that the TVA's 2015 Integrated Resource Plan, “complete with public input, indicates it may be two decades before additional large baseload generation is needed.”
“It's time we answer the question of whether TVA is serving the public well by retaining control of the Bellefonte site, or if others could make more beneficial use of it,” he said.
“With economic development as a cornerstone of our mission, TVA wants to know if there is an entity interested in investing and creating jobs at this location,” he said.