By Associated Press
Birmingham, AL – The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has given final approval for the Tennessee Valley Authority to restart its oldest nuclear reactor after a 22-year shutdown.
The green light came Tuesday after inspectors determined that the unit met standards to go online again.
T-V-A said it spent one-point-eight (b) billion dollars over a five year period overhauling Unit One at Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant.
Units Two and Three were restarted in the 1990s. The restart of Unit One, which could come any day, will mark the first time the entire plant has been operating in about 27 years.
TVA said it has conducted more than 12-hundred safety tests at Browns Ferry, and workers spent more than 15 (m) million hours of work at the plant replacing, refurbishing or modifying systems.
Browns Ferry's Unit One will become the utility's sixth operating reactor, joining the two others at the plant, two at the Seqouyah station near Chattanooga and the single reactor at Watts Bar.
T-V-A is part of a group of utilities and equipment manufacturers planning to apply to build two next-generation reactors at the unfinished Bellefonte plant in northeast Alabama.
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)