Press Mention The Tennessean April 26, 2004
SACE Quoted
TVA takes first step to resurrect Bellefonte plant
In this mention
TVA has applied for federal funding to conduct a $4 million feasibility study on an advanced nuclear reactor at the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant in Alabama. Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, criticizes TVA's nuclear ambitions as a misguided continuation of the failed policies that led to the utility's $25 billion debt, arguing against further federal subsidies for nuclear power.
Here they are begging for more subsidies. I really don't think the federal government needs to be spending more on the failed experiment of nuclear power.
Stephen A. Smith
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Full transcript
Tuesday, 04/27/04
TVA takes first step to resurrect Bellefonte plant
By NAOMI SNYDER
Staff Writer
TVA officials have made the first formal, baby step in reviving the never-used Bellefonte Nuclear Plant in Bellefonte, Ala.
The federal utility led a consortium of companies applying to the U.S. Department of Energy for help in funding a $4 million feasibility study on an advanced nuclear reactor at the Bellefonte site.
The almost complete Bellefonte plant, which TVA values at about $4 billion, was never brought online. Construction was halted in 1988.
Much of the nuclear industry experienced higher-than-expected nuclear costs and diminishing demand in the 1980s, and Bellefonte was one of several plants whose construction was halted.
It's been about 30 years since any utility company started building a new nuclear power plant in the United States.
But several industry representatives have joined recently to apply for federal funding for various nuclear projects.
"(Nuclear power) is clean and safe, and it's an important part of our energy mix that needs to be maintained," Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said.
He said about 20% of the nation's energy is supplied by nuclear power, but that the Department of Energy would like it to be even more.
Stephen Smith, a TVA critic and executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy in Knoxville, said TVA's interest in nuclear power, and the Bellefonte site, is misguided.
It's what got the utility into $25 billion of debt in the first place, and it is unsafe, he said.
"Here they are begging for more subsidies," Smith said.
"I really don't think the federal government needs to be spending more on the failed experiment of nuclear power."
Companies such as General Electric don't think it's a failed experiment. The new advanced boiler water reactor that General Electric makes and is proposing to put at Bellefonte is operating at three plants in Japan, company spokesman Peter Wells said.
It costs less money than existing reactors and has been approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, he said.