NRC renews license for TVA's oldest nuclear plant

The Tennessee Valley Authority's oldest nuclear plant received a 20-year license extension Thursday from federal regulators.

All three reactors at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Athens, Ala., were granted longer operating lives, into the 2030s, by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

NRC Chairman Nils Diaz and NRC Director of Nuclear Reactor Regulation Jim Dyer signed the license renewal at a ceremony at the plant.

The action "means that TVA customers will benefit from the plant's clean, safe and reliable power for many years to come," said TVA President and Acting Chief Executive Officer Tom Kilgore.

Among the reactors receiving license renewal is the long-idled Unit 1 reactor, TVA's first. The unit started in 1974 and made international news a year later when a worker using a candle to check for air leaks started a fire that disabled safety systems throughout the plant.

That was the worst commercial reactor accident in the United States prior to the Three Mile Island meltdown in Pennsylvania in 1979 - an event that led to stricter safety standards and TVA's voluntary shutdown of its nuclear plants, including Browns Ferry, in 1985.

Browns Ferry Unit 2 returned to service in 1991; Unit 3 followed in 1995. Together they have proved to be some of the nation's leading performers and generate about 1,500 megawatts.

The 1,280-megawatt Unit 1 reactor is expected to return to service in May 2007 following a $1.8 billion upgrade. TVA officials say it will be the country's first "new" reactor this century.

The NRC license approval will allow TVA to continue operating units 1, 2 and 3 until 2033, 2034 and 2036, respectively.

TVA, the nation's largest public utility, also operates two reactors at the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn., and one unit at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Spring City, Tenn.

The Sequoyah plant is licensed to 2021 and Watts Bar to 2035. License extensions for Sequoyah are expected to be sought.

TVA provides electricity to 158 distributors serving 8.6 million consumers in Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia.

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TVA: http://www.tva.gov

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