Tennessee Valley Authority’s Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant is near Athens, Ala.FAST FACTS• Brown’s Ferry construction began in 1966 and the plant began operating in 1974.• In March 2002, Brown’s Ferry Unit 3 reactor finished the longest unbroken operational run of a TVA nuclear unit and the second-longest among all U.S. plants. It ran nonstop for 669 days before going off-line for a scheduled refueling outage, generating a world-record 18 million megawatt hours during that time.Source: Tennessee Valley Authority
TVA officials say increasing federal oversight of the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant will cost the utilities and ratepayers “in the millions of dollars.”
The statement came after TVA lost its appeal of federal regulators’ dire safety report in May over a failed cooling valve at Browns Ferry, located in Athens, Ala.
Because of the report, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it will send teams of inspectors into the plant to review TVA’s inspection and safety culture.
In early May, the NRC concluded that last fall’s failure of a cooling-water injection valve at the plant – along with the revelation that the valve may have been inoperable for more than 18 months – was a rare red-level finding of “high safety significance.”