The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant Unit 2 has begun a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage after operating continuously for more than seven months.
“The outage is a scheduled and carefully planned activity for safely replacing fuel and performing maintenance on key equipment and systems,” said Keith Polson, Browns Ferry site vice president. “Browns Ferry units 1 and 3 will both continue to operate during the outage.”
An additional 830 TVA and contract employees will supplement the site’s regular staff during the outage, which began last Friday. More than 167,000 work-hours of activities are planned.
“We are committed to providing safe, reliable power to the people of the Tennessee Valley,” said Mr. Polson. “The Unit 2 outage will help improve equipment reliability as the station continues its pursuit of sustained top industry performance.”
At full capacity, Browns Ferry’s three generating units provide a combined 3,300 megawatts of carbon-free electricity. This is 10 percent of TVA’s total generation capacity and enough electricity to power 2 million homes. TVA also operates two units at Sequoyah Nuclear Plant in Soddy-Daisy and one unit at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant near Spring City. A second unit is currently being built at Watts Bar and is scheduled for fuel load later this summer.