17 Oct (NucNet): Utility Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has chosen US nuclear contractor Bechtel Power to lead the engineering, procurement and construction to complete unit 2 at the Watts Bar nuclear power plant in Tennessee.
The pressurised water reactor unit, which Bechtel said is scheduled for completion by 2012, will add approximately 1,200 megawatts of power to the TVA system. Work on the original plant was stopped in 1985, when TVA shut down its nuclear programme partly because of a decline in demand for electricity.
In August 2007, the TVA board unanimously approved completing Watts Bar-2 at an estimated total cost of 2.49 billion US dollars (USD) (1.8 billion euro) for the five-year construction project.
At the time, TVA said it would use lessons learned in its successful USD 1.8 billion restart of Browns Ferry-1 in May 2007, one of the most extensive restart efforts in the nuclear industry. Bechtel supplied engineering, start-up, and other technical services for that restart.
TVA operates six nuclear units at three generating sites – three boiling water reactors at Browns Ferry in Alabama and three pressurised water reactors at Watts Bar and Sequoyah nuclear plants in Tennessee.
Unit one at Watts Bar is a 1,121-megawatt PWR. It was the last commercial nuclear unit in the US to begin commercial operation, in 1996.
>>Related reports in the NucNet database (available to subscribers)
New Reactor Will Cost USD 2.2 Billion, Says Tennessee Valley Study (News No. 168, 7 November 2005)
TVA Approves Plan To Complete Second Unit At Watts Bar (News No. 180, 2 August 2007)
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