After generating more than 13.5 billion kilowatt hours of carbon-free energy over the past 18 months, the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Sequoyah Nuclear Plant Unit 2 began a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage early Friday morning.
“Outages like this are vital to continuing nuclear power’s role as a key supplier of reliable, low-cost, clean electricity to those we serve in the Tennessee Valley,” said Tony Williams, site vice president. “In addition to loading new fuel, some key maintenance activities can only be safely completed when we are offline, so we will make the most of this opportunity to ensure Unit 2 operates safely and reliably for another 18 months.”
An additional 700 TVA and contract employees are supplementing the site’s regular staff during the scheduled outage. Approximately 10,000 work activities are planned, including loading new fuel assemblies, performing inspections of reactor components, maintenance of plant equipment and installing unit enhancements.
Sequoyah Unit 2 is one of seven operational TVA nuclear reactors across the Valley. Collectively, TVA’s nuclear fleet reliably provides more than one-third of the electricity used across the Valley.