After safely generating more than 18 billion kilowatt hours of carbon-free electricity and recording more than 650 days of continuous operation, the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant Unit 3 started a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage early Saturday morning, February 20.
“Outages like this are our best opportunity to prepare Unit 3 to continue to generate reliable, low-cost electricity for the next 24 months so we can better serve the people of the Tennessee Valley,” said Steve Bono, site vice president. “Beyond loading new fuel, we also do the maintenance and upgrades on plant equipment that help ensure Unit 3 operates safely and dependably in the coming months.”
An additional 1,500 TVA and contract employees are supplementing the site’s regular staff during the scheduled outage. Approximately 15,500 work activities are planned, including loading new fuel assemblies, performing inspections of reactor components, conducting maintenance and upgrades of plant equipment and installing modifications to improve safety margins. The Browns Ferry team will also install upgraded equipment that supports a planned extended power uprate for all three units that will add 465 megawatts of generating capability, enabling the site to serve an additional 280,000 homes in the Tennessee Valley.
Browns Ferry Unit 3 is one of six operational TVA nuclear reactors that collectively supply nearly one-third of all electricity used by more than 9 million people across the Tennessee Valley. A seventh reactor, Watts Bar Unit 2, recently completed construction and fuel load, and is continuing a series of tests to ensure operational readiness.
For more information about TVA and its 82-year mission of service to the Tennessee Valley, click here.