In 2011 when construction of the Watts Bar nuclear power plant was over budget and behind schedule, the Tennessee Valley Authority tapped one of its veteran nuclear managers to complete one of America’s last unfinished reactors.
Mike Skaggs, the 55-year-old engineer who previously worked on starting or restarting three other nuclear plants, succeeded Ashok Bhatnagar as leader of TVA’s $4.2 billion construction program at Watts Bar. After four years of work by nearly 3,500 TVA workers and contractors, Skaggs brought the plant to completion in 2015 on time and on the revised budget adopted when he took the plant over.
Watts Bar still took more than 42 years to complete from when TVA first gained its construction permit in 1973. But Skaggs said what has finally emerged after a series of stops and starts and responses to changing regulations is a safer and better plant than should be equipped to operate for at least the next 60 years.
“This is essentially a new plant built on an existing platform,” Skaggs says.
Since he earned his mechanical engineering degree from Texas Tech University in 1982, Skaggs has worked at nuclear plants across America, including all three of TVA’s nuclear plants over the past decade. Over the past three decades as the number of new nuclear plants being built in America has shrunk, Skaggs has stuck with nuclear plants, restarting some, operating others and starting up new plants. He joined TVA in 1993 as manager of projects at Watts Bar Nuclear Plant and went on to top management posts at Browns Ferry and Sequoyah, in addition to Watts Bar.
Is there another new nuclear plant to finish in his career? Skaggs, who insists he is focused entirely upon getting Watts Bar up and running as a commercial plant by next spring, says probably not. But with four reactor starts under his belt, he also isn’t ruling out another.