The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar Nuclear Plant Unit 1 returned to operation on Saturday, after completing a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage, and is again producing reliable, carbon-free energy. At its full generating capacity, the unit creates enough energy to power 650,000 homes.
“Throughout the outage, our employees and contract partners maintained their commitment to the people of our region by safely working to position Unit 1 for its next 18-month cycle of reliable, carbon-free power generation,” said Tony Williams, Watts Bar site vice president.
During the outage, the Watts Bar team completed more than 13,000 work activities, including replacing 95 of Unit 1’s 193 fuel assemblies; performing inspections of reactor components, steam generators and other plant systems; replacing or servicing plant equipment, and installing system enhancements to help the unit continue safe, reliable operation for years to come.
Maintaining COVID-19 safe work practices, TVA continues to take multiple and significant steps to help protect the health and well-being of employees and supplemental workers.
During 2021, scheduled outages have been safely completed at all three of TVA’s nuclear plants, as well as many of its other generating facilities.
Watts Bar Unit 1 is one of seven operational TVA nuclear reactors across the Valley. TVA’s nuclear fleet is the third largest in the nation, safely and reliably providing more than 40% of all electricity used by nearly 10 million people in the region. Combined with other parts of TVA’s diverse generation system, nuclear power is the major contributor to TVA carbon-free energy, which currently accounts for more than half of all power used by the region.