The Tennessee Valley Authority has completed its biggest equipment upgrade in part of its oldest and biggest nuclear power plant.
More than 500 extra TVA contractors and employees worked over the past seven weeks refueling and installing a major turbine upgrade at the Unit 2 reactor at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant near Athens, Alabama.
The new equipment and related steam piping and bellows comprise the biggest turbine upgrade at Browns Ferry in its 48-year history and will help boost the electricity output from the unit by 7 megawatts, or enough to power to supply more than 4,000 additional homes.
The additional power from the Unit 2 reactor at Browns Ferry will be gained through the improved efficiency offered by the new turbine. It comes just two years after TVA completed a four-year, $475 million power upgrade at all three of the Browns Ferry reactors which collectively added 465 megawatts of additional generating capacity at the three-reactor plant.
Browns Ferry now has a total generating capacity of more than 3.4 gigawatts, making Browns Ferry the second biggest nuclear power plant in America behind only the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona.
"This investment by TVA helps ensure Browns Ferry continues to provide safe, reliable, clean energy to our local power companies as we enter the region's summer peak season and beyond," Browns Ferry Site Vice President Matt Rasmussen said in a statement Monday. "The work completed during this outage demonstrates our team's high level of commitment to our mission of service and to the people living in the communities we serve."
More than 18,000 work activities were completed during the outage, including major repairs to reactor components and the installation of 320 new fuel assemblies along with upgrades, modifications, repairs and testing of other plant equipment and routine maintenance of key safety systems.
Browns Ferry Unit 2, which began operation in 1974, is one of seven nuclear reactors TVA operates. The initial 40-year license for Browns Ferry gained a 20-year extension until 2033 and TVA President Jeff Lyash said he hopes to get another 20-year extension for its oldest nuclear plant.
TVA's seven nuclear reactors collectively generated more than 42% of TVA's electricity last year.
- Compiled by Dave Flessner