Restart of TVA’s Browns Ferry Nuclear Unit Will Mark First New U.S. Nuclear Unit Online in More Than a Decade

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). Tennessee Valley Authority (NYSE:TVC)(TVA) (Knoxville, Tennessee) is 99% complete with construction and is closing in on the restart of the Browns Ferry Nuclear Unit 1. Located in Morgan County, northwest of Decatur, Alabama, Browns Ferry Unit 1 was originally permitted for construction in May 1967, and the operations permit was issued in December 1973 and the unit went commercial in August 1974. The unit ran until 1985 and has been shutdown for 22 years. TVA’s board approved the restart of the unit in May of 2002 and the start-up is on schedule for May 2007. When the unit begins operation it will mark the first time a nuclear unit has come online since TVA’s Watts Barr nuclear unit came online in 1996.

Browns Ferry Unit 1 is made of a General Electric (GE) boiling water reactor (BWR) (MARK I) that provides steam to drive a 1,155 MW GE steam turbine/generator. They started reloading the 764 bundles of nuclear fuel from the fuel storage pool in December and are fully loaded and conducting testing of the reactor. TVA expects to complete testing and have the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) inspect the unit and issue an operating permit in May. TVA also projects that they will be within their $1.8 billion budget for the project.

TVA had selected two firms that provided most of the work on the restart of Browns Ferry 1. Bechtel Corporation (San Francisco, California) is handling the design engineering and Stone & Webster (S&W), a division of the Shaw Group (Baton Rouge, Louisiana), is performing the construction and modifications*. During peak construction, it is estimated that approximately 2,400 contract personnel were on site, with another 60-100 TVA personnel overseeing the project.

The Project was divided into four sections: (1) the Dry Well (Main Containment Building), which is made up of 6-8 inch structural steel encased in 4-6 foot concrete; (2) the Reactor Building (Secondary Containment); (3) the Control Building; and (4) the Turbine Building. In addition, there were support projects, such as the rebuilding of the sixth mechanical draft cooling tower that burned down in the past.

*S&W/Shaw is also doing maintenance for all of TVA’s nuclear fleet through 2008.

TVA was formed in 1933 by the United States Congress and has its main offices in Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Nashville, Tennessee. Employing over 13,000 workers, TVA is a $6.8 billion self-supporting federal corporation and America's largest public power producer.

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