Watts Bar Nuclear Plant
One highlight during the quarter was the safe move of the 288,000-plus pound Watts Bar 2 reactor pressure vessel head from its holding stand to the top of the reactor pressure vessel in order to support work activities in the containment building.
TVA photoAlthough work on the second reactor at Watts Bar Nuclear Plant is 80 percent complete, one of the big challenges in working on it has been meeting new requirements prompted by three meltdowns in Fukushima, Japan, two years ago, according to Mike Skaggs, TVA senior vice president for nuclear construction.
In part because Watts Bar near Spring City, Tenn., will be the first new reactor in the United States to be completed in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, TVA is leading the way in making many safety recalculations and retrofits, according to utility officials.
“We don’t have others to learn from,” Skaggs said. “We’re pretty much at the front of the nuclear industry in installing it [the new emergency equipment and procedures], and we’re having to learn as we go.”
At Fukushima, a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 damaged the emergency cooling systems of the five-reactor nuclear plant. With no power, and no back-ups, three of the plant’s five reactors melted. The resulting radiation leak contaminated the air, water and soil around the plant, forcing authorities to evacuate 160,000 residents from the area. About half will not be allowed to return to their homes even by 2017, according to a March story in Asahi Shimbun.
Last month, Fukushima’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., admitted it deserves a majority of the blame for the nuclear disaster because the plant and plant workers were ill-prepared to deal with the quake and tsunami.