TVA board to meet next week in Cookeville

Bookings of the new Putnam County Convention Center on Tennessee Avenue continue with a board meeting of the Tennessee Valley Authority set for next week.

"The Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors invites the public to join them in person or online as they conduct their quarterly business meeting at 9 a.m. CT on Thursday, May 8," the agency said in a public notice. "The meeting will be held at the auditorium at the Putnam County Convention Center, 6000 Tennessee Ave., Cookeville, and will also be streamed live on TVA.com."

According to the announcement, a listening session will be held from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Wednesday, May 7, in the convention center. Pre-registration is required to speak at the event.

The meeting agenda and instructions for signing up to speak at the listening session will be available by the end of the day on Thursday, May 1.

A story this week in the Knoxville News-Sentinel suggests that the board "won't take any consequential votes after President Donald Trump ordered the termination of two members, according to a public notice from the federal utility."

"Since the last board meeting in Knoxville in February, Trump has whittled the board from six members to four — too few for the governing body of the nation's largest public power provider to conduct its regular business," the News-Sentinel reported. "The TVA board needs more than four members present to reach a quorum for voting."

Trump directed the terminations of board member Michelle Moore on March 27 and board chair Joe Ritch on April 1, the week after the board selected former TVA operations chief Don Moul as the utility's next president and CEO.

According to the Associated Press, Moul has served as TVA's executive vice president and chief operating officer since June 2021. In a news release announcing his selection, TVA focused in part on Moul's leadership in the advancement of nuclear energy technologies and his experience as a licensed senior reactor operator. He started in the new role on April 9.

Earlier this month, U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty wrote a guest column arguing that the TVA board was bogging down a project that seeks to build a small modular reactor with studies and hurdles.

Blackburn and Hagerty also said that hiring a CEO from within would forgo the chance to recruit a "top-quality leader" from outside the utility, which provides power to 10 million people across seven Southern states, the AP reported.

Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, called the op-ed by Blackburn and Hagerty "reckless interference." He said they don't understand the "risk of rushing nuclear technology before it's ready for prime time both economically and safety-wise."

Clean energy advocates have also criticized TVA's decision to replace several of its aging coal plants with another fossil fuel, natural gas. One of the natural gas lines planned to serve the TVA plant in Kingston would run through part of Putnam County.