Tennessee Valley Authority announced Friday the safe and successful completion of the Unit 2 refueling and maintenance outage at Sequoyah Nuclear Plant, finishing the work ahead of schedule and under budget, officials said.
The 83-day outage began on Oct. 15, 2012, and was completed on Jan. 6. The Sequoyah Unit 2 refueling and maintenance outage and steam generator replacement project was scheduled for 90 days and budgeted for $376 million. Actual costs for this outage will be finalized in the coming weeks but the plant’s leadership team is confident the final cost will be under budget.
“We are committed to the safe and efficient operation of TVA’s nuclear plants to ensure we provide reliable nuclear power to the people who live and work in the Valley,” Preston Swafford, TVA’s Chief Nuclear Officer, said. “The steam generator replacement project was a complex feat of design, engineering and skilled craftsmanship. I’m extremely proud of the nuclear professionals who worked tirelessly to manage this outage at Sequoyah Unit 2 safely, with careful attention to costs and schedule, all while continuing to operate Unit 1 at 100 percent power.”
The four steam generators that were replaced are massive heat exchangers that generate large volumes of steam to spin a turbine-generator to make electricity. TVA has also completed similar steam generator replacement projects at Sequoyah Unit 1 in 2003 and at Watts Bar Nuclear Plant’s Unit 1 in 2006.
Including Sequoyah plant personnel, contractors, craft, and other temporary workers there were nearly 3,000 people involved in this outage. 1,300 temporary workers were involved in the safe replacement of the steam generators which required approximately one million work hours; all completed without a single lost-time incident, officials said.
Additionally, about 1,000 temporary workers supported the refueling and maintenance of Unit 2. Refueling and maintenance work cannot be done while Unit 2 is online so in addition to refueling Unit 2, every reasonable effort was made to complete additional major modifications to valves, pumps, electrical systems and the switchyard. This work further ensures the efficient operation of the plant to reliably generate power at 100 percent until the next refueling outage.
Sequoyah Unit 2 is one of six nuclear power generating units operated by TVA at three facilities, supplying more than 30 percent of TVA’s electric generation capacity and helping to fulfill TVA’s vision of being a national leader in the production of clean, low-cost energy.