After operating at full power for more than three weeks and producing more than 500 million kilowatt hours of emission free electricity, Watts Bar Unit 2 has been declared to be in full commercial operation.
It will now become part of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) rate base. The federally owned agency, which produces all of its revenue from sales to customers, now operates seven nuclear reactors that represent about 1/3 of its generating capacity and will produce 40% of its annual electricity output.
Bill Johnson, TVA's CEO, stated that the completion of Watts Bar 2 will assist TVA in fulfilling its mission "to make life better in the Valley by providing reliable, low-cost energy, protecting our area’s natural resources and working to attract business and growth."
He went on to say that “Watts Bar Unit 2 is a key part of our commitment to produce cleaner energy without sacrificing the reliability and low cost that draws both industry and residents to our area.”
Completion of the first new operating nuclear power plant in the United States since 1996 is a big deal and a good news story.
“Nuclear power remains the only source of carbon-free energy that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Joe Grimes, TVA executive vice president of generation and chief nuclear officer. “TVA believes that Watts Bar Unit 2, and other nuclear units like it across the Valley and the nation, represents a vital investment in our clean energy future.”
TVA's press office took a little creative license by announcing that the project had been completed within a $4.7 billion dollar approved budget. That statement is true if referencing the most recently approved revision to an original project cost estimate that began at $2.5 billion in 2007. That was when the TVA board made the final investment decision to complete the project that had begun in 1974.
Watts Bar Unit 2 will probably be the last nuclear plant completed whose construction began during the first Atomic Age in the US. The only other partially constructed projects with some hope of being completed - the two units at TVA's Bellefonte site - are being auctioned off for pennies on the invested dollar and will most likely be used for other purposes.
The Watts Bar construction project, part of a fleet of 14 ordered reactors, was initially suspended in 1986 when the agency thought unit 1 was ready for an operating license and unit 2 was considered to be approximately 80% complete. At the time, all five of TVA's then-licensed reactors were shutdown and the agency was under pressure from customers and politicians to fix its internal management challenges.
Why Were TVA's 1970s Era Predictions So Wrong?
You might wonder how it was possible for TVA to so grossly overestimate its future needs that it would order 14 reactors in the late 1960s and early 1970s and still be capable of supplying its customer demand in 1986 without operating a single reactor.
It turns out that the large number of halted nuclear projects in the 1970s and 1980s in the US and abroad were partially responsible for both TVA's large orders and its subsequent decision to halt its nuclear construction program.
In the early 1970s, facing what looked like a very large growth in world wide demand for enriched uranium, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)/Energy Research and Development Agency (ERDA)/Department of Energy (DOE) asked the TVA to be ready for major increases in firm demand at the enrichment facilities at Paducah and Portsmouth.
Those agencies -- actually the same agency under three different names at different times -- were monopoly suppliers enriched uranium. US government-owned enrichment plants used gaseous diffusion, an energy intensive process that consumed the output of two large reactors to supply a single enrichment facility.
The people who asked TVA to be ready to supply a vast increase in electricity demand did not foresee the crash in the world nuclear market that started in the mid 1970s nor did they expect that the development of centrifuge technology would make it possible to enrich uranium using just 5-10% of the energy needed by the gaseous diffusion plants.
In a November 29, 1983 letter to the editor of the New York Times (published December 5), the TVA board of directors explained its position in an ongoing conflict with the Department of Energy. The Times had expressed dismay with the TVA for trying to convince the DOE to pay for electricity that it was not using.
TVA's board described its fiduciary responsibility to fight the DOE's effort to avoid paying for imposing the costs associated with beginning and then cancelling the generating capacity needed to meet their production prediction. It also explained why it was legally restrained by its enabling legislation from completing the plants and then seeking other customers who could have used the power.
