The Tennessee Valley Authority is moving forward with a plan to build a multibillion-dollar pumped storage hydroelectric plant directly across from its abandoned Bellefonte nuclear plant in Jackson County, Alabama.
Leftover transmission lines from the unfinished nuclear plant were one reason TVA chose the site near the town of Pisgah as its preferred location for a new pumped storage facility. The plant would be TVA’s first new hydro facility since the 1970s.
In a construction project spanning eight years, the nation’s largest public power provider would drill tunnels through Sand Mountain and build a new reservoir on the mountaintop covering 400 acres.
The Rorex Creek site, named decades ago for the nearest body of water following TVA convention, could host a plant similar to the Raccoon Mountain Pumped Station Reservoir overlooking Chattanooga.
(READ MORE: TVA’s Raccoon Mountain hydropower plant capable of powering 1 million homes)