NRC OKs New Work at Bellefonte

February 20, 2009

McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Chattanooga Times Free Press, Tenn.
More than two decades after construction stopped at the
Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant, federal regulators have cleared the way for the Tennessee Valley Authority to resume Alabama's costliest
construction project.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Thursday it will reinstate
the construction permit for the original Bellefonte units, even as the
agency considers another request to build two new units at the
Bellefonte site near Scottsboro, Ala.
TVA spokesman Terry Johnson said the federal utility welcomed the
NRC's decision, although he said TVA has yet to make a decision either
to finish the original reactors or build new reactors at Bellefonte.
Louise Gorenflo, a member of the Bellefonte Efficiency and
Sustainability Team, which opposes TVA's plans for a nuclear plant at
Bellefonte, urged the NRC not to license the Bellefonte units because
"the design is over 30 years old and has not proven to be successful
in the United States."
TVA invested more than $4 billion in the unfinished reactors at
the Bellefonte site before suspending construction in 1988 and giving
up the plant's construction permits in 2006. The federal utility
halted work on the units -- more than half finished at the time --
because the growth in power demand slowed and the costs of finishing
the original Bellefonte units continued to rise.
Last August, however, TVA asked to reinstate the construction
permit to allow the utility to reassess whether rising power and
material costs have changed the economics of finishing the units.
TVA also is developing plans to build two next-generation
reactors at Bellefonte through a consortium of other utilities known
as NuStart Energy LLC.