Critics hit Browns Ferry financing

Critics hit Browns Ferry financing

By Rebecca Ferrar
News-Sentinel business writer

TVA plans the $1.77 billion restart of a northern Alabama nuclear plant at the same time it's spending $1 million a day to slash coal-fired plant emissions and pay down its $25 billion debt.

Environmental activists say the math doesn't add up and question the wisdom of tackling the costly restart of Unit 1 of the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant at Athens, Ala., while other expensive tasks are on the table.

"TVA is making too many promises to too many people," said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

"They promised the White House, the state and the people they would clean up the air (from coal-fired plant emissions); they're promising the distributors and nuclear power folks they will get this nuclear power plant on line; and they're promising to keep the rates low and keep the debt down. There's a point at which you've promised more than you can deliver. Do the math. Show me the money."

TVA says long-term health is goal

TVA spokesman John Moulton said extensive financial and environmental assessments were conducted before the federal agency made its decision to restart.

In its financial review to the TVA board, TVA staff said it aims to do the "lowest financing cost that will enhance TVA's long-term financial position."

The staff contemplated the potential use of TVA internal cash flow and planned to evaluate outside proposals from private investors to finance the project.

TVA said this could be done at the same time the agency is reducing its debt.

The restart is expected to take five years.

The seven-state agency's evaluation of the restart shows that cash flow would turn positive in May 2007 and break even in 2015.

John Noel, a Tennessee Environmental Council board member who testified with Smith to the TVA board against a Browns Ferry restart, said

he and other members of the public were ignored when the restart decision was made.

Noel had urged TVA to allow an "independent" group of scientists to assess whether it made sense to restart the unit rather than relying on TVA's own "pro-nuclear" staff.

Moulton, however, said public meetings were held in Alabama and said the only opposition was from anti-nuclear activists.

He noted that the 29-year-old plant already was licensed and that TVA is not required to go through the licensing process again. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will oversee the restart process and approve the actual restart.

"We've had public meetings," Moulton said. "We did our draft (environmental statement). The (Environmental Protection Agency) said it's better to operate on an existing site and better than going out and generating on a site that's never generated power."

Now that TVA's public comment period is passed, environmentalists say the next stop is Congress and the federal General Accounting Office.

Hugh Jackson, with Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment, a Ralph Nader group, says the NRC's review of the restart will be useless.

"The NRC never met an application they didn't like," he said.

"I'm more interested in getting Congress to take a look at what TVA is doing," Jackson said. "I don't understand the economics of it."

One of Smith's staff attended a TVA-NRC meeting last week at which the Browns Ferry schedule was discussed.

"Our organization will track the process as closely as we possibly can," Smith said. "It's a complicated and intimidating process."

Ed Passerini, a University of Alabama professor of environmental studies and member of the Alabama Environmental Council, claimed TVA's projections for power needs, and thus the need for the additional nuclear power, are "excessive."

Like other environmentalists, he says TVA needs to invest its millions in alternative energy sources.

"We're very concerned this is a hole in which they are throwing money and that money means more trouble in the future," Passerini said.

"That money would be better used to clean up the coal-fired plants, better manage the hydro plants, in a pro-conservation public relations campaign and an aggressive demand-side management program."

Such a management program would involve TVA working with large customers to use power during non-peak periods in exchange for lower rates.

Rebecca Ferrar may be reached at 865-342-6357 or ferrar@knews.com.