The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) would be entirely justified in renaming its Browns Ferry Unit 1 nuclear power plant the “Phoenix” power plant. Not for geographic reasons (the plant is located in Alabama, not Arizona). Rather, the name would be an appropriate nod to the mythological Egyptian bird that repeatedly dies in fire and is reborn from ashes to conquer the sky. The 1,200-MW General Electric boiling water reactor powering the unit has twice crashed in ashes—first literally and then figuratively—during its 40-year history, and been reborn. It has earned its title as the ultimate comeback reactor.
What’s old is new again
The latest return of Browns Ferry Unit 1 to service this year results from a massive upgrading and restart of an existing reactor—one that had not run since 1985, when a regulatory shutdown of TVA’s entire five-reactor fleet idled this elderly unit. Over the years, TVA returned the two younger Browns Ferry boilers and the two Sequoyah Westinghouse pressurized water reactor (PWR) units to service. Finally, it commissioned the Watts Bar Unit 1 PWR plant in 1996.
The Watts Bar start-up marked the last commissioning of a new nuclear plant in the U.S., emptying the nuclear construction pipeline that began to dry up in the mid-1970s.
But Browns Ferry Unit 1 (Figure 1) remained in stasis. Not dead, but in a deep administrative coma.
1. Successful restart. Browns Ferry Unit 1 was restarted in May of this year after a five-year, $1.8 billion overhaul. It had been idled since 1985, when it was shut down because of plant management and operations concerns. Courtesy: TVA
In 2002, TVA decided that, given current and anticipated load growth, it needed to get the nuclear unit back in service. Restarting (and massively refurbishing) the aged nuke, the TVA board concluded, was less costly overall than building new generation. Five years and $1.8 billion later, the geriatric plant is up and running again, flexing its upgraded muscles and looking very much like a new unit.
The U.S. nuclear industry, always putting an optimistic face on its long-lasting exile from the generating market, has billed the Browns Ferry restart as the first new nuclear plant of the 21st century. That’s understandable hyperbole, but not entirely accurate. TVA first broke ground on Browns Ferry in 1967. The plant that went back into service in 40 years later in 2007 surely isn’t the same one that started generating electricity in the early 1970s.
Browns Ferry Unit 1 isn’t the first U.S. unit of the 21st century; it’s the last unit of the 20th century—after being one of the first.
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