Nuclear Power Key Part of TVA’s Future

In recent weeks, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has announced its intention to add more nuclear capacity to its system, one of the nation’s largest. The utility currently has plans to complete Bellefonte Nuclear Plant in north Alabama, a project that PACE supports. In January, PACE paid a site visit to Bellefonte to learn more about the plant’s progress and estimated completion date.

TVA also made public in February that it intends to pursue the construction of a new, innovative reactor design in Oak Ridge, TN, as soon as 2022. Those plans must meet the approval of regulators and the TVA Board of Directors. For now, TVA says it is working to ensure that the cost of future nuclear construction is closely managed.

“I am a believer in nuclear power, but frankly our history is pretty spotty,” said TVA CEO Bill Johnson. “If you look back at the 1970s and ’80s, the estimates on those plants and the actual completion costs varied greatly.”

While a plan for more nuclear power in the TVA system has its critics, notably those who cite the high initial construction costs, the concept has earned the praise of Tennessee’s U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker. The senators agree, as does PACE, that balancing the TVA portfolio with reliable base-load power is an important investment for the utility’s customers. In the long term, the best designed utility systems are those that choose from multiple options with enough robustness to accommodate changes in fuel costs, economic growth, and consumer demand.

“You have to understand that the same folks who are arguing against more nuclear power in the TVA system also want to close the utility’s coal-fired units,” explains PACE Executive Director Lance Brown. “At the end of the day, providing power to nine million people and countless industries with natural gas and renewables alone is not sound policy. It portends a great deal of danger to customers in terms of price.”

For example, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy opposes new nuclear reactors in the Southeast, but has also called for the retirement of as many as 121 coal-fired units in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Florida. With natural gas serving as the only base-load power resource not opposed by the organization, their vision would tether the price of electricity in large part to the price of natural gas, which historically has been relatively volatile.

Speaking of the Bellefonte nuclear plant, TVA’s Johnson says, “I worry about any major project that requires a lot of capital, a lot of time and a lot of people because they are just hard to do well. There are few things we could do for our customers that will matter more than to do these things well.”

In the interest of TVA’s customers and the future of nuclear power across the region, PACE is certainly pulling for the utility to make wise decisions about Bellefonte and other nuclear power projects. Doing so would be an important signal that diversity will be a cornerstone of our region’s energy future.