TVA BOARD TO ALLOT OVER $80 MILLION TO NUCLEAR POWER PROGRAM

April 26, 1994

Contact: Danielle Droitsch (615) 637-6055

TVA BOARD TO ALLOT OVER $80 MILLION TO
NUCLEAR POWER PROGRAM
$30 MILLION GOES TO WATTS BAR NUCLEAR POWER PLANT

At a TVA board meeting rescheduled for this afternoon, the TVA Board will approve over $80 million for the agency's nuclear power program — $50 million of which are over budget items for both the Sequoyah and Watts Bar nuclear power plants. Approximately $30 million of the total will go toward the Watts Bar nuclear power plant which has been under construction for 22 years. According to TVA figures, the power program invested $2 billion in the nuclear power construction and operation program last year — a little less than 40 percent of the agency's annual budget — when only 9 percent of the agency's power came from nuclear. TVA currently estimates that it will cost over $6 billion to bring all their nuclear units into operation.

The board's vote comes as TVA begins to compile their 20-year energy plan called Energy Vision 2020. The Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) will decide how TVA will proceed with power plant production, energy efficiency services, environmental impacts and a host of other power related issues. TVA was criticized by Congress at a hearing on March 9 for relying too much on nuclear power for future energy demand and not giving enough consideration to energy conservation, natural gas, solar or other more environmentally sensitive technologies. The Energy Vision 2020 plan will answer questions about TVA's investment into any of these future options. In the past, TVA's energy efficiency and conservation programs prevented the need for the equivalent of one nuclear reactor. The programs, however, were canceled in 1988. The IRP process is now over two months behind the original schedule TVA announced February.

The Tennessee Valley Energy Reform Coalition, made up of eight groups based throughout the Tennessee Valley, argues that TVA's continued spending on the nuclear power program forces investment into other possible energy options such as renewed activity in energy efficiency programs and the commercialization of renewable resources that might be considered under the plan. The organization is also frustrated that TVA is excluding the one reactor at Watts Bar, as well as the Brown's Ferry Unit 3 reactor, from consideration under the energy plan. Already, TVA has delayed the start-up of Watts Bar twice last year.