Seven years after voting to sell its Bellefonte nuclear plant site, the Tennessee Valley Authority has reversed itself and decided to keep the Jackson County, Alabama, power plant for another potential use.
TVA directors voted Thursday to rescind their 2016 declaration of most of the Bellefonte site as surplus and will retain ownership of one of America’s biggest unfinished construction projects. But exactly how TVA will use the 1,400-acre riverfront site is not yet determined.
Matthew Rasmussen, TVA’s senior vice president of nuclear engineering and operations support, told the TVA board Thursday that Bellefonte is an attractive site for future power production as TVA seeks to potentially double its generation portfolio in the next three decades.
“Our intention is to preserve this for helping us to meet additional power demand,” he said Thursday during a TVA board meeting in Chattanooga. “A recently completed study has determined that the best use for the property in the near term (five years) and long term (10 years) would be new generation and energy storage.”
But there are no specific plans yet for the property, Rasmussen said. The two giant cooling towers, the transmission lines and other power facilities in Hollywood, Alabama, make the plant site attractive for other potential power generation or storage facilities, he said.