Reviving units an option, TVA says

Reviving units an option, TVA says

Director says the utility still needs to make sure that repair work will not push up the relative cost of power.

BY DAVE FLESSNER
BUSINESS EDITOR

The Tennessee Valley Authority may reactivate some of its mothballed nuclear reactors for extra power in the future, TVA Director Skila Harris said Tuesday.

But Ms. Harris said construction or repair work will not resume at any of TVA's four idled or unfinished nuclear units until the utility determines it won't push up TVA's relative cost of power.

Furthermore, the TVA director said utilities eventually must have a permanent storage dump for their radioactive nuclear wastes.

"I think the nuclear industry has a real opportunity now, not only because of changing public attitudes but also because the economics look different," Ms. Harris said in an interview with the editors of the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

"When it makes good business sense for TVA, then I think it is a very viable option."

Soaring natural gas prices and stricter environmental requirements for coal have pushed up utility costs at a time of rising energy demand. By contrast, nuclear power plants are powered by cheaper uranium fuel and don't have the air pollution or global warming problem of fossil fuels. Ms. Harris said TVA is well positioned with

a mix of generating capacity from coal, nuclear, hydro and natural gas.

But the nuclear power industry is still struggling to find a permanent home for the highly radioactive wastes it generates.

"For nuclear power to truly be viable in the long term, we're going to have to deal with the nuclear waste issue," TVA Chairman Craven Crowell said in a recent interview.

Congress directed the Department of Energy in 1982 to find a site to bury spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive wastes. DOE has identified Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the preferred site, and tests continue at the site on storage methods.

Ms. Harris, a former DOE official who visited Yucca Mountain just last week, said the Nevada location is the most tested and proven site for storing the nuclear wastes.

"We are so far along on the road toward permanent storage at Yucca Mountain," she said. "The issues are no longer technical; they are political."

In the meantime, however, TVA continues to store its spent nuclear fuel on site. The utility generates 81 tons of used fuel each year and in 2004 will begin storing nuclear wastes in above-ground, concrete containers with steel-inner canisters.

Some object to storing nuclear wastes at nuclear plants. But Ms. Harris said the storage casts are safe and the biggest issue about nuclear wastes is what happens thousands of years from now.

"It makes no sense to make these sites on the Tennessee River where we get our drinking water the nuclear dumps of our region," said Dr. Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, an anti-nuclear group.

Ms. Harris and fellow Director Glenn McCullough, who will assume control of TVA on Monday when TVA Chairman Craven Crowell retires, may decide in the next year whether to begin work to restart TVA's oldest nuclear reactor. Browns Ferry Unit 1 has been idle since safety concerns were raised in 1985.

Ms. Harris said she has confidence in TVA's nuclear staff to be able to restart the Browns Ferry unit within budget. Preliminary studies suggest the Unit 1 reactor would cost more than $1 billion to repair and restart.

TVA wants to add more generating capacity to meet its rising load, but Ms. Harris said one of the utility's goals is also to continue to reduce its $26 billion debt.

"We want to make sure our costs continue to be lower relative to other utilities in the market," she said.