The Tennessee Valley Authority began refueling the oldest reactor at the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant over the weekend after the unit generated 14.7 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity over 523 days during its most recent operating cycle.
More than 12,700 work activities are planned during the refueling outage this month at Sequoyah, including loading new fuel assemblies, performing inspections of reactor components, maintenance of plant equipment and installing unit enhancements.
“Planned outages like this one allow us to complete necessary work to upgrade and make improvements to plant systems to help ensure we continue delivering reliable, low-cost, carbon-free energy to the people and businesses we serve,” Sequoyah Site Vice President Tom Marshall said in a statement Monday. “The team will load 80 new nuclear fuel assemblies and perform key maintenance activities that can only be safely completed with the unit offline.”
Planning for this outage began more than three years ago as part of the site’s standard work management practices to ensure all work can be completed as scheduled during the refueling.
The Unit 1 reactor at Sequoyah began commercial operations in 1981 and is one of seven operational reactors for TVA, which operates the third largest nuclear fleet in the country. The two reactors at Sequoyah can supply enough power to meet the needs of about 1.3 million homes in the Tennessee Valley each day.
The 523-acre plant site is on the Chickamauga Reservoir near Soddy-Daisy.
— Compiled by Dave Flessner