Cost of reopening U.S. nuclear reactor shows how difficult it will be to build new facilities

By Matthew L. Wald

Published: May 9, 2007

WASHINGTON: The Tennessee Valley Authority plans to reopen its Browns Ferry 1 nuclear reactor this month - 22 years after it was shut for safety reasons and five years after extensive renovations began.

The move reflects the increased interest in nuclear power as an energy source that does not contribute to global warming. But the government agency's willingness to spend $1.8 billion on the overhaul - almost as much as a new plant is supposed to cost - also shows just how difficult it is to build a new plant.

While several American utilities have talked about starting a new reactor - none has been ordered since the 1970s - no company has yet applied for an operating license.

Browns Ferry 1, in Athens, Alabama, enjoys the advantage of already having a license, despite being out of use for over two decades.

David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists who once worked at Browns Ferry, said the decision to put so much into old technology was noteworthy.

"Most people," he said, "are going to buy the new iPod rather than an 8-track tape player."

The decision to refurbish rather than start from scratch also saved time, with project completion anticipated in 60 months. The industry has tried hard to shorten the time needed to plan and build a new reactor, but still projects that it will be about 12 years.

Compared to starting fresh, fixing up an old plant is a simpler task from a regulatory point of view, said James Curtiss, a former member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and now a lawyer at Winston & Strawn, which specializes in the nuclear field.

"You've got many of the key regulatory decisions behind you," he said. Using an old license avoids the need for what is likely to be a drawn-out and contentious public hearing.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has made changes in its licensing procedure that it says will make the process faster and more predictable, but some utilities are nervous about being the first to try it out.

Browns Ferry would be the first reactor to come into service in this decade in the United States. The last one was Watts Bar 1, also a TVA plant, in Spring City, Tennessee, in 1996. Construction had been halted at Watts Bar 1 for years. The TVA is now studying whether to finish Watts Bar 2, where most work stopped in 1988.

At Browns Ferry 1, the TVA says it has installed about 150 miles, or 240 kilometers, of cable and more than 6 miles of pipes, an unprecedented effort at a completed plant. At the Nuclear Energy Institute, which is the industry's trade association, Adrian Heymer, the senior director for new plant deployment, said that one reason for the extensive replacements was so "the paper trail would be re-established," to assure that all the work was performed up to nuclear standards.

Heymer said that the project at Browns Ferry was a kind of rehearsal for new plant construction, showing that the industry could still manage large projects. It may not be ready to go on the road: Any effort to build a number of new reactors, Heymer said, could run up against a national shortage of welders and other craft workers.

Last week, General Electric said it was ordering parts for a new reactor that it hopes will be built at North Anna, in Virginia, adjacent to two reactors operated by Dominion. The reactor has not yet been ordered, however.

Last year, Constellation Energy, of Baltimore, ordered parts for a plant it hopes to build in Calvert County, Maryland, south of Washington, and adjacent to its Calvert Cliffs reactors.

As for the Browns Ferry renovation, Craig Beasley, a TVA spokesman, said that the exact cost would not be known for some months, but would probably not be much more than $1.8 billion. The reactor's power level is also being increased, and will eventually be over 1,200 megawatts if all goes as planned.

The standard measure for power plants is price per kilowatt, which is roughly the amount of generating capacity needed to run one window air conditioner. It will come to about $1,500 at Browns Ferry.

Two years ago, Westinghouse was saying that its AP-1000 reactor could be built from scratch for about $1,400 a kilowatt of capacity. Since that time, though, prices for stainless steel, concrete and other ingredients have gone up.

The Nuclear Energy Institute predicted that after the first few had been built, the cost would be about $1,200 a kilowatt, and that the first would cost closer to $1,400.