May 30 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Dave Flessner Chattanooga Times/Free Press, Tenn.

The Tennessee Valley is poised to lead the nation's revival in nuclear power generation, congressional members from the TVA region said here Thursday.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., praised TVA for restarting its oldest reactor at the Browns Ferry site near here last year and for preparing to build new reactors at the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant site in Hollywood, Ala.

During his appearance at the two-day conference on "putting science and technology to work," Sen. Sessions urged TVA also to take a role in developing nuclear fuel reprocessing to limit wastes.

"Nothing clears the mind so much as the lack of alternatives," Sen. Sessions told more than 500 business and government leaders during the Tennessee Valley Technology Corridor Summit. "I think we're in a period where we need to have a renewal of new nuclear power in America."

With gas prices approaching $4 a gallon, U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said electric-powered vehicles soon will come on the market to compete with gas-fired vehicles. Such plug-in hybrids could be recharged during off-peak hours, but more electricity will need to be generated from sources other than burning coal or natural gas.

"Nuclear has got to be part of the solution," Sen. Corker said during opening remarks at the summit.

U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, the Chattanooga Republican who helped create the Tennessee Valley Technology Corridor in 1995 to connect federally funded research facilities from Huntsville to Oak Ridge, said the region already is benefiting economically by renewed interest in building nuclear reactors.

"Conservation is not for wimps, it's for warriors, and we all need to do our part," he said. "But to meet our growth needs and to deal with the challenges of climate changes, nuclear power must be in the center of our solutions."

As a federally owned utility, TVA is uniquely positioned to work with the U.S. Department of Energy and is able to borrow money without having to answer to stockholders worried about the financial risks of new plants, Rep. Wamp said.

No new U.S. reactors have been ordered since the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania. But in the past couple of years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has received applications for up to 30 new reactors, including 18 in the Southeast.

Alstom Power Co. is hiring up to 350 employees to staff a new turbine-building facility in Chattanooga on the same site where the former Combustion Engineering abandoned much of its nuclear equipment production in the 1980s after utilities quit ordering plants.

TVA is in the process of employing up to 2,000 engineers and hourly craft workers to complete its $2.5 billion project on the Unit 2 reactor at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant near Spring City, Tenn.

TVA directors have not decided whether to build new reactors at Bellefonte, although TVA Vice President Jack Bailey said economics favor building the units, even with a $3 billion to $4 billion price tag for each unit.

Last month, TVA also signed a preliminary agreement to work with the U.S. Department of Energy on building a prototype plant, perhaps in or near Oak Ridge, to reprocess spent nuclear fuel to recover more of the energy in the fuel and to limit radioactive wastes. Already, Teledyne Brown Engineering in Huntsville is expanding its nuclear engineering and manufacturing complex to add 200 employees.

Mr. Bailey said another nuclear component maker is looking in the Tennessee Valley to possibly build a production factory to make modular parts for new plants.