U.S. regulators approve first Nuclear power plant in two decades

News, US October 24, 2015 , by IRIA No Comments

U.S. federal regulators have approved an operating license for TVA’s Watts Bar Unit 2, allowing the first new American nuclear plant to begin operation in nearly two decades.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave the go-ahead to the Tennessee Valley Authority on Thursday to load uranium fuel into the Watts Bar Unit 2 reactor in Spring City, Tenn., about 50 miles southwest of Knoxville. The government-run power agency can put the plant into commercial operation once it successfully completes a series of tests and inspections.

The Spring City reactor that will be the United State’s first new nuclear-generating plant of the 21st century has gotten the go-ahead from the federal government.

The last nuclear unit to get an operating license in the United States was Watts Bar Unit 1 in February 1996.

“This achievement signifies more than a stage in construction for TVA,” President and CEO Bill Johnson said. “It demonstrates to the people of the Valley that we have taken every step possible to deliver low-cost, carbon-free electricity safely and with the highest quality.”

The initial $2.5 billion restart project for the Unit 2 reactor has ended up taking nearly three years longer and nearly $2 billion more to finish.

TVA Chief Executive Bill Johnson said he expects the new Watts Bar Unit 2 reactor to reach full power within a few months. “We’re not going to be slow, but we are going to be deliberate,” he said, to ensure everything works properly before ramping up electricity production.

Watts Bar Unit 2 is new because it just got permission to operate, but its design and technology are very much a thing of the past. Construction at Watts Bar actually began way back in 1973, and continued until 1985, according to City Lab. That’s when major safety concerns delayed the opening of the first reactor until 1996 and TVA abandoned plans to finish the second, which they only decided to restart in 2007.

“It’s a 20th-century reactor—it’s not a 21st-century reactor,” says Dave Lochbaum, who worked for the TVA as a nuclear engineer in the 1980s and now directs the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s called ‘new build’ but there’s an asterisk on that.”

City Lab report also points out groups critical of nuclear power frequently cite Fukushima to argue that we should “phase out dangerous nuclear energy entirely.” Certainly the disaster showed that even reactors in highly advanced countries carry a certain amount of risk, but it also exposed some very practical safety procedures that should be standard in any nuclear plant, and are very doable.