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The Watts Bar Nuclear Plant is a
Tennessee Valley Authority The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolin ...
(TVA)
nuclear reactor A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction or nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear reactors are used at nuclear power plants for electricity generation and in nuclear marine propulsion. Heat fr ...
pair used for electric power generation. It is located on a 1,770-acre (7.2 km²) site in
Rhea County, Tennessee Rhea County (pronounced ) is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 32,870. Its county seat is Dayton. Rhea County comprises the Dayton, TN Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is also i ...
, near Spring City, between the cities of
Chattanooga Chattanooga ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. Located along the Tennessee River bordering Georgia, it also extends into Marion County on its western end. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, ...
and Knoxville. Watts Bar supplies enough electricity for about 1,200,000 households in the Tennessee Valley. The plant, construction of which began in 1973, has two Westinghouse
pressurized water reactor A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a type of light-water nuclear reactor. PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan and Canada). In a PWR, the primary coolant (water) i ...
units: Unit 1, completed in 1996, and Unit 2, completed in 2015. Unit 1 has a winter net dependable generating capacity of 1,167 megawatts. Unit 2 has a capacity of 1,165 megawatts. Both units are the newest operating civilian reactors to come online in the United States, and Unit 2 is the first and only new power reactor to enter service in the 21st century in the US.


Unit 1

The construction began on 23 January 1973, and suffered from many delays. After construction was halted on both units in 1985, construction resumed on Unit 1 in 1992. First criticality was achieved on 1 January 1996 and commercial operation began on May 5, 1996.


Unit 2

Unit 2 construction started in the 1970s. Unit 2 was 80% complete when construction on both units was stopped in 1985 due in part to a projected decrease in power demand. In 2007, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Board approved completion of Unit 2 on August 1, and construction resumed on October 15. The project was expected to cost $2.5 billion, and employ around 2,300 contractor workers. Once finished, it was expected to employ 250 people in permanent jobs. The final cost of the plant is estimated at $6.1 billion. A year after the
2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami The occurred at 14:46 Japan Standard Time, JST (05:46 UTC) on 11 March. The Moment magnitude scale, magnitude 9.0–9.1 (M) Submarine earthquake, undersea megathrust earthquake had an epicenter in the Pacific Ocean, east of the Oshika Peni ...
and subsequent
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster The was a nuclear accident in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan. The proximate cause of the disaster was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which occurred on the afternoon of 11 March 2011 ...
, the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy. Established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, the NRC began opera ...
(NRC) issued 9 orders to improve safety at domestic plants. Two applied to Watts Bar Unit 2 and required design modifications: "Mitigation Strategies Order" and "Spent Fuel Pool Instrumentation Order". In February 2012, TVA said the design modifications to Watts Bar 2 were partially responsible for the project running over budget and behind schedule. The second unit costs a total of $4.7 billion bringing the total costs of the two unit plant to more than $12 billion. TVA declared construction substantially complete in August 2015 and requested that NRC staff proceed with the final licensing review; on October 22, the NRC approved a forty-year operating license for Unit 2, marking the formal end of construction and allowing for the installation of nuclear fuel and subsequent testing. On December 15, 2015, TVA announced that the reactor was fully loaded with fuel and ready for criticality and power ascension tests. In March 2016, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission described the project as a "chilled work environment," where employees are reluctant to raise safety concerns for fear of retribution. On May 23, 2016, initial criticality was achieved. , a transformer fire had delayed the start of commercial operation past the late summer goal. Commercial operation started in October 2016, once the affected transformer was replaced, operators completed the inspection on the switchyard affected equipment and the final full power testing was completed. On October 19, 2016 the Watts Bar 2 was the first United States reactor to enter commercial operation since 1996. Due to failures in its condenser, TVA took it offline on March 23, 2017. The condenser, which was installed during the original construction phase of the plant in the 1970s, suffered a structural failure in one of its sections. On August 1, 2017 the unit was restarted after four months of repairs to the condenser. It will likely be the last
Generation II reactor A generation II reactor is a design classification for a nuclear reactor, and refers to the class of commercial reactors built until the end of the 1990s. Prototypical and older versions of PWR, CANDU, BWR, AGR, RBMK and VVER are among them. ...
to be completed in the US. In 2022 the four original steam generator units were replaced.


Tritium production

The NRC operating license for Watts Bar was modified in September 2002 to allow TVA to irradiate tritium-producing burnable absorber rods at Watts Bar to produce
tritium Tritium ( or , ) or hydrogen-3 (symbol T or H) is a rare and radioactive isotope of hydrogen with half-life about 12 years. The nucleus of tritium (t, sometimes called a ''triton'') contains one proton and two neutrons, whereas the nucleus of ...
for the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's)
National Nuclear Security Administration The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is a United States federal agency responsible for safeguarding national security through the military application of nuclear science. NNSA maintains and enhances the safety, security, and ef ...
. The Watts Bar license amendment currently permits TVA to irradiate up to approximately 2,000 tritium-producing rods in the Watts Bar reactor. TVA began irradiating tritium-producing rods at Watts Bar Unit 1 in the fall of 2003. TVA removed these rods from the reactor in the spring of 2005. DOE successfully shipped them to its tritium-extraction facility at Savannah River Site in
South Carolina )''Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no) , anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind" , Former = Province of South Carolina , seat = Columbia , LargestCity = Charleston , LargestMetro = ...
. DOE reimburses TVA for the cost of providing the irradiation services, and also pays TVA a fee for each tritium-producing rod that is irradiated. As the tritium is used for military purposes, Watts Bar unit 1 is fuelled by uranium which does not have peaceful only use non-proliferation restrictions as is normal for commercial reactors.


Surrounding population

The NRC defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of , concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne
radioactive contamination Radioactive contamination, also called radiological pollution, is the deposition of, or presence of radioactive substances on surfaces or within solids, liquids, or gases (including the human body), where their presence is unintended or undesirab ...
, and an ingestion pathway zone of about , concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity. The 2010 U.S. population within of Watts Bar was 18,452, an increase of 4.1 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 1,186,648, an increase of 12.8 percent since 2000.


Seismic risk

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of the risk each year of an
earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, fr ...
intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at Watts Bar was 1 in 27,778, according to an NRC study published in August 2010. The 2018 Southern Appalachian earthquake's epicenter was located two miles east of the facility. The TVA reported that their facilities are designed to withstand seismic events and were not impacted by the earthquake, but personnel would conduct further inspections as a precaution.


See also

*
Watts Bar Dam Watts Bar Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Tennessee River in Meigs and Rhea counties in Tennessee, United States. The dam is one of nine dams on the main Tennessee River channel operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which built the da ...
* Watts Bar Steam Plant * List of the largest nuclear power stations in the United States *
List of power stations in Tennessee The U.S. state of Tennessee receives its power from a variety of sources. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is the primary utility in Tennessee which generates electricity and sells it to hundreds of local utilities and industrial customers. ...


Notes


References


External links

* *   * * * * {{Tennessee Valley Authority Facilities Energy infrastructure completed in 1996 Energy infrastructure completed in 2016 Tennessee Valley Authority Nuclear power stations using pressurized water reactors Buildings and structures in Rhea County, Tennessee Nuclear power plants in Tennessee 1996 establishments in Tennessee