The Unit 1 turbines sit idle at the Bellefonte nuclear power plant in Hollywood, Ala.The mayor of Hollywood, Ala., calls the unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Plant where he once worked “the eighth wonder of the world.”
“Bellefonte is as fine of a built facility as there is, but TVA keeps changing its mind about what it will do with it,” Buster Duke, a retired 66-year-old TVA employee who was elected mayor of Bellefonte’s hometown last year, said Friday. “We would love to see it finished and operating some day, but once again we seem to be getting a different message from TVA.”
The Tennessee Valley Authority, which resurrected engineering work on the stalled twin-reactor project in 2011, halted work again this summer and released new cost estimates this week suggesting completion of the North Alabama plant will cost from 50 to 78 percent more than what was projected just two years ago. The higher cost, combined with a slowing demand in power, convinced TVA to mothball the 40-year-old construction project yet again.
TVA President Bill Johnson told TVA directors Thursday that a new assessment of the plant raised the estimated price tag of just one of the units to between $7.4 billion and $8.7 billion. In 2011, TVA estimated the first reactor could be finished for $4.9 billion.
Former TVA Chief Operating Officer Bill McCollum on Friday questioned the new higher cost estimate.