Nearly 47 years after construction began on the Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant in Northeast Alabama, the Tennessee Valley Authority is giving up its construction permit for America’s biggest unfinished nuclear plant and abandoning any plans to complete the twin-reactor facility.
TVA notified the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week that it would not renew its regulatory permit at Bellefonte after a federal court agreed to cancel the proposed sale of the nuclear plant to an investment group that had hoped to complete the two pressurized water reactors and operate the nuclear facility.
Former Chattanooga developer Franklin L. Haney, whose Nuclear Development LLC agreed to buy the Bellefonte plant five years ago, was unable to transfer the construction permit from TVA and a federal judge ruled last month that TVA could cancel the sale of Bellefonte to Haney’s group.
Giving up the construction permit at Bellefonte signals the end of any new nuclear plant construction at TVA with only seven of the 17 nuclear reactors the utility once planned to build ever completed.
Although Haney could still appeal the court ruling, TVA is moving to abandon the nuclear generation option at Bellefonte, at least using the two existing units TVA spent more than $5 billion to build over the past half century.