The Tennessee Valley Authority began a refueling of its newest reactor at the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant over the weekend after the unit 2 reactor at the Soddy-Daisy power plant operated for 513 days and generated 14.7 billion kilowatthours of electricity during its previous fuel cycle.
Sequoyah Site Manager Tom Marshall said over 12,000 work activities are planned during the current outage, including loading 81 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," Marshall said. "We know that reliability matters, and Sequoyah's highly skilled workforce is making the most of this opportunity to ensure Unit 2 continues to operate safely until its next refueling outage about 18 months from now."
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.
To implement safe work practices and COVID-19 precautions, Sequoyah continues to conduct health screenings, mandate face coverings and practice social distancing to help protect the health and well-being of TVA employees and additional contract workers who will be working temporarily at the plant during the refueling outage.
Sequoyah Unit 2 is one of seven operational TVA nuclear reactors that collectively supply more than 40% of TVA's electricity. TVA's nuclear fleet is the third largest in the United States.
- Compiled by Dave Flessner