Tennessee Valley Constructing Dry Cask Storage System at Sequoyah Nuclear Power Station

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). The Tennessee Valley Authority (NYSE:TVC) (Knoxville, TN) is constructing a dry cask storage system to store spent reactor fuel at the 2,296 megawatt (MW) Sequoyah Nuclear Power Station near Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee.

Spent nuclear fuel is used fuel from a reactor that is no longer efficient in creating electricity, because its fission process has slowed. This material remains thermally hot, highly radioactive, and potentially dangerous. Due to lack of a permanent disposal repository, as defined in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, spent fuel is stored onsite at one hundred thirty one temporary disposal sites in thirty-nine states. The amount of the spent fuel at each site continuously increases as each operating nuclear power reactor in the United States performs a refueling outage on an average cycle of every 18 months. Initially fuel is stored in specially designed pools at each reactor location but as spent fuel pools near their capacity, licensees may move towards the use of dry cask storage systems. Dry cask storage allows fuel that has been cooled in the spent fuel pools for at least one year to be surrounded by inert gas and stored inside a container called a cask.

Construction of the storage system at Sequoyah started earlier this year and must be completed by the fall of 2003 for the plant to continue generating electricity. Design and equipment are being supplied by Holtec International Incorporated (Marlton, New Jersey) with Stone & Webster Incorporated, a company of The Shaw Group Incorporated (NYSE:SGR) (Baton Rouge, Louisiana), directing construction activities. The dry cask storage area will be designed to contain over ninety casks or enough capacity to store spent fuel for the remaining licensed life of the plant.

After more than 20 years and $4 billion in scientific study, Congress approved and President Bush signed House Joint Resolution 87 paving the way for the United States Department of Energy to develop the Yucca Mountain Project in Nye County, Nevada as the nation's first permanent high level nuclear waste disposal facility. This is not an immediate solution to nuclear waste storage problems however as the project still faces heavy opposition from the State of Nevada and other interests. The earliest that Yucca Mountain could begin to accept radioactive waste is 2010.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was formed by the United States Government (TVA Act 1933) and today is America's largest public power company with a generating capacity of over 30,000 MW. TVA operates forty-nine power plants including three nuclear generating stations.