The Tennessee Valley Authority is scaling back plans for new generation at its Bellefonte Nuclear Plant in Northeast Alabama as it moves forward with building a natural gas plant at its John Sevier Fossil Plant near Rogersville, Tenn.
The Bellefonte plant, picked three years ago as a possible site for America’s next new reactor and once eyed for up to four reactors, is now being studied for a single reactor to be built over the next decade. TVA announced Friday that falling power sales and rising cleanup costs in Kingston have changed plans for the plant in Hollywood, Ala.
“As the valley grows, TVA intends to meet the demand for power with a combination of conservation, energy efficiency, renewable energy sources and additional base load generation,” TVA Senior Vice President Ashok Bhatnagar said.
TVA expects it will need another new reactor or major power plant by 2020 at the latest. But no decision on building any new reactors will be made until the agency completes its ongoing integrated resource plan to look at energy options quickly changing due to the economy and pending regulations.
In the immediate future, however, TVA is moving ahead with plans for an $820 million, gas-fired plant to help replace the John Sevier Fossil Plant that faces a court-ordered pollution cleanup. TVA announced Friday that an 880-megawatt combined-cycle plant approved by TVA directors in June will be built adjacent to the John Sevier plant over the next two years.
Robert Deacy, senior vice president of clean strategies and project development, said the site was the most economical location the agency reviewed.
“TVA already owns the property, and it makes the most sense from a transmission perspective as well,” he said.
Earlier this year, a federal judge ordered TVA to install scrubbers to control sulfur dioxide emissions and selective catalytic reduction devices to limit nitrogen oxide pollutants from the John Sevier plant. The fossil plant is one of four coal plants in East Tennessee and Northeast Alabama blamed by North Carolina’s attorney general for illegally polluting the air in the Tar Heel state.
In response to the court order, TVA directors voted in June to shift plans for a gas-fired power plants from sites in West Tennessee and East Mississippi to Upper East Tennessee to make up for a potential shutdown of the John Sevier plant. TVA contends it can’t make the pollution controls required by the court by the end of 2011.
In an internal memo, TVA Senior Vice President John McCormick said the utility has not decided whether to install the court-ordered pollution improvements at John Sevier or shut down the 57-year-old plant.
“A core team is evaluating the options, and as you all know, all options are on the table at this point from doing nothing to shutting the plant down,” he said.
Spectra Energy, which acquired the East Tennessee Natural Gas system in 2000, has filed a preliminary application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to expand its gas lines to serve the new gas-fired plant.
At Bellefonte, TVA spokesman Terry Johnson said TVA is now considering three options: finishing one of the original Babcock & Wilcox reactors started 35 years ago; build one of the new Westinghouse AP-1000 reactors with the NuStart Energy coalition, or scrap any building plans at the site.
TVA began building reactors at Bellefonte in 1974, mothballed the units in 1988, canceled the reactors in 2006 and launched an effort to build all new reactors and then revived plans to finish the original reactors.
“TVA has been extraordinarily schizophrenic at Bellefonte in recent years,” said Louis Zeller, science director for the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League. “It seems like TVA has been operating on a “ready, shoot, aim” basis of operation.”
But the conditions for the nation’s biggest federal utility have rapidly changed in the past year. TVA had forecast nearly a 2 percent growth in power sales this year, but the recession has cut such sales by 7 percent instead.
TVA also is facing a $1 billion price tag to clean up its Kingston ash spill and Congress is debating legislation to force utilities to generate more power from renewable sources and limit greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
Chattanooga Times Free Press August 8, 2009
TVA, the great spendthrift of our time, knows how to spend billions of OPM (other people’s money) but can only cut back millions in their wastrel ways.
As TVA hunkers down to protect its bonus scheme, wild statements spurt out from management that when put together show an out of control federal agency with no idea which way to turn.
There are but a few remaining members of TVA’s board of directors. Of nine authorized seats, only five are serving within their appointments; one other, William Sansom, remains on the board even after his term expired May 18, 2009. While this is permitted under their by-laws, any decisions he participates in would be under a cloud. Five members constitute a quorum.
Apparently fearful of protests, the last board meeting on July 21 was held in absentia by telephone. The main purpose of the meeting was to rush through the hiring of a new public relations vice president. This is a typical TVA knee-jerk reaction by management to hire more people instead of getting at the root of their management problems. Likely this would call for deep cuts in management staff and their bonuses.
But TVA’s obtuse management and the accommodating board do not believe there is a forest beyond a thousand TVA trees. Its part of the “TVA culture” identified in the OIG report.
The next scheduled board meeting August 20 in Knoxville, Tennessee promises to be very tightly controlled and then only to approve a few board actions.
As TVA hunkers down waiting for the next serious blows to its very existence, continued blurts of uncertainty will verifying its own ineptitude and its inability to understand why they’re coming at TVA from all directions.
TVA, its time to throw in the towel.
Also see http://norsworthyopinion.com/tvaanddoetiptoethroughthetulips.aspx
Ernest Norsworthy emnorsworthy@earthlink.net http://norsworthyopinion.com
This is a note for the previous commenter. Last time I checked, all bonuses for TVA managers were canceled for FY2009. So much for attempting to "protect its bonus structure." If that changes between now and October, I'll be as upset as anybody.
There are a lot of good people at TVA doing a lot of good things for our community, our state, and the whole Tennessee Valley. Try not to paint us all with such a broad, unflattering brush.
Or login with:
New Account