The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar Nuclear Plant Unit 1 began a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage last Saturday, after producing more than 13.2 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity over the past 18 months.
“Our work during this outage will position Watts Bar Unit 1 to continue generating low-cost, carbon-free nuclear energy to reliably power daily life across the Tennessee Valley for the next 18 months,” said Paul Simmons, site vice president.
An additional 800 TVA and contract employees are supplementing the site’s regular staff during the outage. More than 10,000 work activities are planned, including loading new fuel assemblies, performing upgrades to Unit 1’s turbines, performing inspections of the unit’s reactor equipment and steam generators, maintenance of plant equipment, and installing additional Unit 1 enhancements.
Watt Bar’s two operational units produces enough power for 1.3 million homes. TVA also operates three units at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant near Decatur, Al., and two units at Sequoyah Nuclear Plant near Soddy-Daisy. Collectively, TVA’s nuclear fleet reliably provides more than one-third of the electricity used across the Valley.