Posted on 08/28/2008 8:22:05 AM PDT by kellynla
Tennessee Valley Authority officials are looking at the feasibility of completing its two unfinished nuclear reactors in northeast Alabama and has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reinstate its construction permits.
The utility said Wednesday that it sent a letter Tuesday to the NRC asking to reinstate the permits for Units 1 and 2 at its 1,600-acre Bellefonte site in Jackson County. TVA had stopped construction at the site, and by the mid-1990s had spent $4.6 billion; it gave up its construction permits in 2006.
TVA said it would pursue construction permits from the NRC for two modern reactors at that site as it studies its options.
(Excerpt) Read more at al.com ...
Way overdue.
The TVA is being forced to do it. They recently announced a 20% rate hike.
The widespread re-adoption of Nuclear Power would lead to revolutionary changes in our energy production profile and our economy. No issue is more important in this election.
Senator McCain’s Lexington Proposal to build 90 new nuclear plants is bold and visionary but entirely achievable. By implementing the first half of Senator McCain’s proposal the U.S. could be transformed in 5 years from an energy importer to an energy exporter. The economic effects of this transformation would be profound.
We have be been cowered as a nation into the pathetic position of begging the Saudi Arabians to increase production a little bit. That is our current energy policy.
We have been reduced to this sad state by a determined group of environmental extremists who have hamstrung our nuclear power industry through lawsuits and political lobbying. We should not tolerate this situation any longer.
The new generation of pebble bed nuclear reactors produce a fraction of the nuclear waste as compared to the type of reactor built at Three Mile Island. Any waste that is produced could be reprocessed into new fuel as called for by Senator McCain’s proposal.
A brilliant summary of the issues surrounding nuclear power is available here:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=73452
.
The earth worshiping , luddite, anti-scientific left wants to reduce our energy consumption to third world levels to placate their earth god. I hope we finally put a stop to this madness.
Abandoning almost completed nuclear plants (happened in Florida also) also has to be one of the dumbest things we ever did. Oil was cheap and the environmentalist were all about the horrors of nuclear power.
I worked at TVA’s Sequoyah power plant for a number of years. TVA does a good job of managing nuclear power plants and the cheap and abundant power (the birth of which came with the push to build the atom bomb) has completely transformed that part of Tennessee.
Just think, more nuclear power plants, less dependance upon foreign oil.
Wow! I hadn’t seen that. I still have a house in TN, but usually my daughter manages the power bills.
TVA, unfortunately, still carries a debt load dating back to the building of the infrastructure at Oak Ridge....which is why all that electrical power was needed to begin with....certainly not for the economy in East TN because no economy existed at that time. Also, unfortunately, TVA has had some corrupt leadership at various times. Corruption equals misuse of money.
“A brilliant summary of the issues surrounding nuclear power is available here”
I thought so...that’s why I posted a thread for the article yesterday. LOL
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2069108/posts
Now bear in mind, this is not my field...just an idea so if I am missing something, please let me know what it is.
You are mistaken that adding a reactor and associate generation, transmission, cooling, etc would not be subject to lawsuits and regulations.
It may have more likehood of being accepted by the population in the area that is already used to having the plant, more so if they benefit from lower than average electric rates.
Look up the history of Norris Dam. It is the dam immediately upstream of Oak Ridge maybe 15 river miles. Construction and completion in the 1930's. A couple of smaller dams were built during WW2 on the Little Tennessee river as well but not near the size of Norris which has long paid for itself in hydro electric power generation. Actually the dams on the Little Tennessee except for one or two are actually corporate owned by Alcoa. Next in the 1950's there abouts came the coal fired steam plants. The dams in East Tennessee had little to do with Oak Ridge and a lot more to do with The New Deal.
TVA operates nothing in Oak Ridge except their transmission lines into sub stations and Melton Hill Dam the rest was War Department and now DOD/DOE projects. Knoxville is a far larger consumer of power and always has been even during WW2. TVA was about Flood Control or sold as such mainly the dams built in the 30's-50's were to save downstream cities like Chattanooga from flooding.
BTW Tennessee especially East Tennessee had a thriving economy actually before TVA. Many towns were buried by the lakes. River Boats in the late 1800's early 1900's ran all the way into upper East Tennessee to towns like Newport and Sevierville which at that time was loaded with mills, forges, and in the early 1900's timber was also king. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park for example was almost barren mountains in 1900's The old railroad routes are now hiking trails.
The East Tennessee area was rich in commerce a sizable portion from agriculture which TVA did more harm than good. There was also Coal Mining. Added to that that the French Broad, and Holston Rivers which form the Tennessee River ande just down stream the Clinch and Powell empty in were major trade routes north, south, east, and west. I've seen the remains of what was highly thriving communities even before TVA was formed.
Well I know TVA is currently completing a second reactor near Spring City, TN and I haven’t heard of any problems, lawsuits etc....
Not quite the same thing.
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/plant-specific-items/watts-bar.html
TVA received a construction permit for this unit in 1973.
Initial construction on Unit 2 stopped in 1985.
On October 13, 1999, TVA filed a request for extension of the completion date for Unit 2.
On July 7, 2008, the NRC issued an Order extending the Watts Bar Unit 2 construction permit completion date to March 31, 2013.
My x-husband’s family are from around the Knoxville area. Until the Oak Ridge project and the arrival of dam building, they maybe grew something to smoke, some food, ran moonshine, whatever. No one had any money...very near to what you would see in West Virginia. TVA came in and you could make more money cutting trees and getting ready for a dam in a week than you previously made in six months.
They built many, many times the power requirements for that area because they needed the power to develop the atom bomb. There was nothing in the economy at that time that required that kind of power generation except for the atom bomb research. Different story now, I agree, but TVA still carries much of that debt load, because TVA has use of the “facilities” so to speak. It was an abnormal construction cycle. Most power generation facilities grow slowly, none of them in the country started with such a large initial construction.
Yes, I know TVA has nothing to do with the Oak Ridge facility, but if you read through all the documentation released a few years back you will see what I mean, although I’ve simplified it a bit. I had to do a paper in college....it was more interesting than I had originally anticipated.
The only rough economic time happening in East Tennessee was during the Great Depression and even then my grandfather had a full time job in Knoxville. Nobody in the family was out of work then actually. One G Grandfather was a doctor who started out in of all places working in Union County at an industrial community and later worked in Knoxville. He was a storekeeper and later went to school. His brothers did well for themselves also. Another grandfather ran a saw mill and also worked for the CCC building Norris Dam. The factories in the area called Pinhook and Lickskillet in Union County had several factories and these were but one of many. Other communities had quarry operations. Once thriving areas before TVA were cut off and owners due to isolation forced to sell.
If you don't believe what I am saying go to the lakes themselves the upper stream large draw down ones in the winter and you'll see the foundations of once thriving communities. No better example I can think of than an area called Chuck Swan in Union County. East Tennessee was highly industrial before TVA showed up. TVA had more to do in it's pre naming origins as a project for WW1 not in East Tennessee but Muscle Shoals Alabama. By the time it came time for the Manhattan project the power was already for the most part in place. Norris was the main source as it was the closest to it. Here is one link http://www.tva.gov/abouttva/history.htm
Notice how they try to infer the land was poor as were the people? Most in fact were not. But if you go take pictures in the right places you can prove anything. Which is just what they did. The land they took pictures of TVA could not have helped because it was the natural geological formation of the area. FDR's propaganda machine left that part out though.
Flooding the most prime farm land in the valley did not solve erosion it created it more of it in many ways. This is the same thing they did at Tellico. That land was the most fertile soil in east Tennessee and for absolutely no reason TVA flooded it. TVA saved it by flooding it? Worse most of the prime river bottom land along the rivers in East Tennessee was washed away by the dams releasing water most of the year at a rate the river may have seen a few weeks per year if that creating errosion and destroying prime farm land. The New Deal TVA gonna save us all was FDR propaganda for his work programs.
TVA's debt comes from trying to appease the strict requirements placed on it's second biggest generation source which is Coal Fired Steam Plants.
The only major dam construction TVA was involved in for WW2 dam wise was mainly for Alcoa and those were smaller dams. I believe Fontana is the only one on that river TVA actually owns. Douglas Dam began 1942 built in about 1 year. Cherokee was in fact began a year before WW2. Melton Hill actually in Oak Ridge 1960. Construction of Fort Loudon Dam began in 1940 and was completed in 1943. Another one started pre-WW2. Norris was already in place and Douglas and the smaller Fontana Dam was the only major dams in East Tennessee started after the war began. The construction of the ones already underway may have been stepped up but these dams were already planned and underway before WW2 was even being considered. The rest were about a year before WW2 even began.
One other point of interest.
TVA as far as navigational water goes cut off any possibility of river traffic routes to the upper Clinch and Powell rivers as well as any river traffic above Knoxville as no locks were built on Cherokee, Douglas, nor Norris. That means TVA isolated upper East Tennessee from river traffic.
TVA wasn't the savior to the area The New Deal says it was. In many cases people had to sell or else taking what TVA considered fair compensation. The only ones who have made a killing in that respect have been developers with political connections what what happened at Tellico Lake. Good working farms that had been in families ever since were forced sold even above the high water line. Property remaining being lake front they were forced to sell to TVA was given to developers for a song. One of the few things I dislike about Howard Baker and the Late John Duncan who in a late night session pushed through that unneeded and unwanted dam to start with. That type of nonsense is what has made TVA an agency of waste. Part of it is the greenies and part of it an agency that up till a tiny snail darter thought it answered to no one.
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