The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar Nuclear Plant Unit 2 safely began a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage late Friday evening after generating more than 14.0 billion kilowatt-hours of reliable, affordable energy during 501 days of operation.
“Refueling and maintenance outages help ensure that we are better positioned to generate power for the people of the Tennessee Valley region for many years to come,” said Chris Reneau, TVA Watts Bar Site vice president. “During this planned outage, the Watts Bar team will make numerous improvements to the systems and components of Unit 2 that can only be made when the unit is offline.
These upgrades will help ensure that Unit 2 continues to deliver safe and reliable carbon-free energy for the 10 million people we serve throughout the Valley.”
Around 10,000 work activities are planned, including the loading of 92 new nuclear fuel assemblies, performing inspections of reactor components and steam generators, maintenance of plant equipment and installing unit enhancements.
Watts Bar Unit 2 is one of seven operational TVA nuclear reactors.
Watts Bar Unit 1 is offline as the team performs maintenance work on the unit’s main generator.