The Tennessee Valley Authority should continue to build more nuclear power plants while encouraging customers to be more energy efficient, according to those nominated to serve on the TVA board.
During a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday, the four TVA nominees all voiced support for expanding nuclear power for what they said is a needed clean energy source for the seven-state region.
“There is a lot of power that is going unexploited in the (Tennessee) Valley, and I am interested in pursuing every bit of waste heat and power,” said Dr. Marilyn Brown, a Georgia Tech energy professor nominated to serve on the nine-member, part-time board.
“But I am pro-nuclear and I do think it needs to be part of the solution, and I look forward to bringing another unit at Watts Bar on very quickly,” she said.
Dr. Barbara Haskew, a Middle Tennessee State University professor and former TVA manager, also said she wants TVA to promote more efficiency and more nuclear generation.
“To support economic growth, I think we have to have low-cost power, and that additional power may have to be through nuclear,” she said.
Neal McBride, an Oak Ridge attorney also nominated for the TVA board, told a Senate panel that “in the short run, additional generation needs to come almost surely from new nuclear” power plants.
TVA is in the midst of a five-year, $2.5 billion program to finish a second reactor at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant near Spring City, Tenn., by 2012.
Former TVA Chairman Bill Sansom of Knoxville, the lone Republican nominated by President Barack Obama to fill one of the TVA board vacancies, said TVA also is moving toward finishing one of the original reactors at the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant in Alabama and could add three more reactors at that site in future years.
“We’ve got some old dirty coal plants and, even if we were to miss the call for increased demand, I think nuclear must be part of our solution,” Mr. Sansom said.
U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., urged the TVA nominees to support building more nuclear power plants, which he said would help lower air emissions and limit rate increases. Sen. Alexander and Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., praised the four candidates for the TVA board vacancies and urged their prompt confirmation by the U.S. Senate.