The Tennessee Valley Authority announced today that its board will not decide the future of its Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant in April as originally proposed.
"We've decided to take more time before we make a recommendation to the board to study the alternatives," TVA spokesman Terry Johnson said.
The TVA board was scheduled to decide on April 16 whether to finish one of the original reactors at Bellefonte or to pursue one of the next-generation units at the North Alabama site. An Environmental Impact Statement prepared last year found that it would be less expensive for TVA to complete the Unit 1 reactor at Bellefonte than to pursue building a new AP-1000 Westinghouse reactor.
Mr. Johnson said TVA "will decide by the end of the year" whether to finish the old or pursue the new option. When TVA suspended construction at Bellefonte in 1988, the Unit 1 reactor was judged to be nearly 90 percent complete.
Since then, however, TVA has gutted some of the equipment from the unit and new regulations could require more equipment to be installed. TVA gave up its construction permit at Bellefonte in 2005 when the utility thought it wouldn't complete the original reactors. But the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission agreed last year to reinstate the construction permit and upgraded the status of the building permit in January to allow work to resume.
For complete details, see tomorrow's Chattanooga Times Free Press.