By Associated Press
Scottsboro AL – The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday agreed to consider a combined construction and operating license application for a two-reactor nuclear plant at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Bellefonte site near Scottsboro AL.
The application came from Knoxville-based TVA, the country's largest public utility, and its nine consortium partners at NuStart Energy Development LLC.
The NRC will consider the application along with a request from Westinghouse to modify its design for the new AP1000 pressurized-water reactors planned for Bellefonte. Those reactor changes will affect steam generator modifications and reflect the NRC's proposed rule on aircraft impact assessments.
The NRC noted this "does not indicate whether the commission will approve or reject the requests" from TVA and Westinghouse. And TVA indicated it has yet to decide if it will actually build a new station on the site of the unfinished Bellefonte plant shuttered years ago.
At this point, Ashok Bhatnagar, TVA's senior vice president for nuclear generation development and construction, said, "We are pleased that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has determined that the license application submitted for a new nuclear plant at Bellefonte is sufficient to begin the review process."
Bill Borchardt, who heads the NRC's Office of New Reactors, said the review of the AP1000 reactor design will likely run through 2009, while the licensing review for the Bellefonte site will "continue into 2011."
"The application is very thorough and was prepared and submitted on schedule," Bhatnagar noted.
The NRC's decision to place the applications on its docket "is the next step in the licensing process that will give TVA more certainty about the cost and schedule of the project and will help determine if building a new nuclear plant at Bellefonte is the best option to meet the growing energy needs of the Tennessee Valley," Bhatnagar said.
TVA, which operates six reactors at three sites, has begun work completing a second reactor at the Watts Bar station at Spring City in Tennessee. Work was stopped on the reactor in 1985. Finishing it will take five years and cost $2.5 billion.
The new Watts Bar reactor will provide more than 1,200 megawatts enough to supply about 650,000 homes in the Tennessee Valley. The AP1000 reactors planned for Bellefonte would be about the same size.
TVA provides electricity to about 8.7 million consumers through 159 distributors in Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia.
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TVA: http://www.tva.gov