Atoms could power city upturn

Chattanooga's economic recovery could be fueled, in part, by nuclear power, the Chattanooga Manufacturers Association was told Wednesday.

The head of the growing Westinghouse Corp. nuclear services facility in Chattanooga said Wednesday more nuclear plants are needed in the United States to meet the growing demand for energy. Westinghouse Vice President Wayne Bentley said many of the workers for those plants could be trained in Chattanooga at Westinghouse's new $25 million boiling water reactor training center and welding institute.

Mr. Bentley told the 107th annual meeting of the Chattanooga Manufacturers Association that nuclear power offers the best near-term energy option to meet a growing demand for electricity and expected limits on carbon and smog emissions from coal and other fossil fuels.

Despite construction cost overruns when the previous generation of nuclear plants were built, Mr. Bentley said, those plants are now running at lower costs than other power plants. New nuclear reactors are being designed that contain only half as many pumps, valves and pipes and can be built more quickly and cheaply, he said.

"The nuclear industry has significantly changed the way it operates," Mr. Bentley said, noting that plant reliability has increased while unplanned shutdowns have declined.

To help staff existing and new nuclear plants, Westinghouse erected a 65,000-square-foot facility in Chattanooga's riverport last year to train workers on maintenance and refueling of reactors. Westinghouse also is building a $3.6 million office next to its training center.

Within the Westinghouse facility, a 106-foot-hole was dug, less than 300 yards from the Tennessee River, to simulate the spent fuel ponds in boiling water reactors.

"We had to pump the water out of our pit (during construction), but it is now one of only two such simulated pools of its kind," Mr. Bentley said.

Westinghouse employs about 150 people -- and trains hundreds of other contractors and utility employees -- at its Chattanooga complex.

Downstream on the Tennessee River, Alstom Power is building a $350 million facility to produce nuclear plant components. The Tennessee Valley Authority also is in the midst of a $2.5 billion program to finish a second reactor at its Watts Bar Nuclear Plant near Spring City, Tenn., and is studying whether to spend even more to finish other reactors at its Bellefonte plant in Hollywood, Ala.

The nuclear investments, combined with the $1 billion Volkswagen auto assembly plant taking shape at Enterprise South industrial park, should help Chattanooga regrow much of its manufacturing base, the incoming chairman of the Chattanooga Manufacturers Association said.

The University of Tennessee Center for Business and Economic Research projects that manufacturing employment in Tennessee will decline 11 percent in 2009. But Dan Nuckolls, general manager for the Koch Foods poultry plant in Chattanooga and the new chairman of the CMA, said Chattanooga should fare much better.

"It's exciting to see what is happening in our town with the resurgence in manufacturing we could only dream about two or three years ago," Mr. Nuckolls said.