Nuclear power fuels Tennessee economy, study says

The power of the atom was harnessed for the first atomic bomb in the then-secret city of Oak Ridge during World War II, and eight decades later, a new study shows East Tennessee remains part of the nucleus of America’s nuclear industry.

The trade association E4 Carolinas estimates the nuclear power industry has a $9.8 billion impact on Tennessee’s economy, adding an estimated 40,286 jobs in the Volunteer State — one of the highest of any state in the country. Combined with neighboring Georgia, Virginia and the Carolinas, the region gets an estimated 138,674 jobs and $38.1 billion in economic impact from nuclear power, the association says.

“There is a ‘fertile crescent’ of the nuclear industry located in the Southeastern United States,” Joseph von Nessen, a research economist at the University of South Carolina, wrote in a new 53-page report on the nuclear industry in the South. “The economic impact of the nuclear industry extends beyond the fence line of nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants rely on an extensive supplier network of firms throughout the local regions in which they are located, and there are also many private and federal facilities engaged in various forms of high-tech, nuclear-related research and development, waste remediation and other support activities.”

The share of electricity generated by nuclear power plants in those five leading nuclear power states in the South is more than double the national average, and the two most recently built commercial nuclear plants in the U.S. were in Tennessee at Watts Bar Unit 2 near Spring City and Georgia at Vogtle Units 3 and 4 near Waynesboro.