Critics blast contract for Bellefonte generators

The Tennessee Valley Authority has yet to officially decide to build the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant in Alabama, but the federal utility has awarded a contract to a Canadian company for the biggest remaining pieces of equipment needed to complete the reactor.

Babcock and Wilcox Canada Ltd., an affiliate of Babcock and Wilcox Nuclear Energy Inc., announced last week it will design and manufacture two 500-ton steam generators for TVA's Unit 1 reactor at Bellefonte.

Gary Morgan, an anti-nuclear activist who lives near Bellefonte in Scottsboro, Ala., charged Tuesday that the contract exceeds the authorization given by TVA's board of directors to conduct engineering and feasibility studies before deciding whether to build the unit.

"TVA is putting the cart before the horse and this contract clearly goes beyond what the board authorized in August for Bellefonte," said Morgan, a member of the Bellefonte Efficiency and Sustainability Team, which is opposed to the Bellefonte plant.

"This construction project also does not support U.S. jobs for our citizens in a time of increasing unemployment," Morgan added.

But TVA officials insist the initial contract for long-lead items such as fabricating the steam generators is a key part of the $248 million budgeted for Bellefonte in the current fiscal year.

"All the contracts that we have signed or are negotiating for equipment at Bellefonte have language for termination if the decision is made not to complete the plant," TVA spokesman Terry Johnson said.

"But if we are going to be prepared to have the unit come on line in the 2018 to 2020 timeline we now envision, we need to proceed with contracting for equipment that will take several years to design and build."

Johnson said the steam generator contracts were competitively bid among multiple supply firms, but he declined to reveal the purchase price or terms of the contract.

TVA removed the steam generators from Bellefonte in 2005 when the utility scrapped plans to finish the plant, which was begun in 1974 and halted in 1988.

The steam generators are designed to produce superheated steam to be transported to the turbines for electricity generation.

Morgan said he has asked TVA's Inspector General to see if the B&W contract exceeds the board authority granted in the fiscal 2011 budget plan adopted in August.

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