The TVA Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Athens, Ala.For at least the ninth time in three years, the Tennessee Valley Authority has been cited by federal regulators for violating safety standards at one of its three nuclear plants that operate in a half circle around Chattanooga.
Perhaps we just hear it so much that we tune it out.
Perhaps Tennessee is so engrained in the nuclear tradition – Oak Ridge, after all, is basically where nuclear power began – that we just automatically dismiss it.
Perhaps we shouldn’t. Perhaps we need to look again without the rose-colored glasses.
No matter how many times TVA and our politicians and the nuclear power industry chant that nuclear power is clean, safe, affordable energy, we shouldn’t just smile and nod.