Plans unveiled for completion of Bellefonte nuclear plant
After spending more than 40 years and $5 billion on an unfinished nuclear power plant in northeastern Alabama, the nation’s largest federal utility sold the property at auction back in 2016 for a fraction of its cost. The Bellefonte Nuclear Generating Station in Hollywood, Ala was sold by the Tennessee Valley Authority for $111 million to Nuclear Development (ND) LLC in Nov. 2016. According to Shelia Shepard, the president and CEO of the Jackson County Economic Development Authority, where the plant is located, ND has made “much progress “ at the site in the past year and a half. Last month, ND brought on SNC-Lavalin, one of the leading engineering and construction groups in the world, to manage the completion of the construction project. On Friday, Huntsville-based Teledyne Brown Engineering announced it would be working with SNC-Lavalin on the project. “We are pleased to participate in the completion of Bellefonte in support of renewed interest in nuclear power as an energy source that is necessary for the overall energy portfolio for the United States,” said Jan Hess, President of Teledyne Brown Engineering, in a press release. Possible services to be provided by Teledyne Brown Engineering include engineering and technical expertise, which will consist of nuclear subject matter experts in the areas of engineering, design, licensing, maintenance, work controls, and equipment refurbishment. The company has been supporting energy and nuclear industries for over five decades. Teledyne Brown Engineering’s Huntsville campus is located 45 miles away from the site and is in a prime location to provide support and expertise. The company will assist the SNC-Lavalin team as needed during the design, construction, start-up and steady state delivery phases of the Bellefonte project. On Monday, SNC-Lavalin and ND announced plans to the community that they are working to complete the unfinished plant. The project is expected to create several thousand construction jobs and approximately 1,500 permanent jobs over the next decade.
Alabama nuclear plant up for sale at fraction of cost
After spending more than 40 years and $5 billion on an unfinished nuclear power plant in northeastern Alabama, the nation’s largest federal utility is preparing to sell the property at a fraction of its cost. The Tennessee Valley Authority has set a minimum bid of $36.4 million for its Bellefonte Nuclear Plant and the 1,600 surrounding acres of waterfront property on the Tennessee River. The buyer gets two unfinished nuclear reactors, transmission lines, office and warehouse buildings, eight miles of roads, a 1,000-space parking lot and more. Initial bids are due Monday, and at least one company has publicly expressed interest in the site with plans to use it for alternative energy production. But TVA says it isn’t particular about what the purchaser does — using the site for power production, industrial manufacturing, recreation or even residences would all be fine with the agency, said spokesman Scott Fiedler. “It’s all about jobs and investment, and that’s our primary goal for selling this property,” said Fielder. TVA hopes to close the deal in October. The sale is bittersweet for site manager Jim Chardos, who went to work at Bellefonte in 1994 expecting it to be finished as a nuclear power plant. All these years later, he commutes 90 minutes each way to work to oversee a plant that has never been stocked with radioactive fuel or used either of its reactors to generate a single watt of electricity. Work began at Bellefonte in the mid-’70s on the backside of the nuclear energy boom in the United States, Chardos said. The utility initially planned to construct four reactors at the site, but demand for power in the region never met those early expectations and work halted in 1988. A series of starts and stops preceded TVA’s decision earlier this year to sell Bellefonte. “If you’re going to make 1,200 megawatts you need to sell it to somebody, and if there’s no need for it you’re not going to finish,” he said. “And that’s really what’s happened.” Sales of U.S. nuclear plants aren’t all that unusual; the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group, says at least 30 units have been sold in part or whole since 1999. The potential sale of Bellefonte is creating hope in a region where residents gave up long ago on the promise of thousands of good-paying, permanent jobs that were once expected at the plant. “It was a great thing but then they just pulled the plug and left out, you know,” said Hollywood Mayor Frank “Buster” Duke, who worked at Bellefonte about a decade before moving on. Today, he said, the 1,000 or so residents of his town need a place to work whether TVA or some other entity owns the property. “It would help the area as far as land values go. Population would improve, businesses would come in,” he said. The Nevada-based Phoenix Energy has said it will offer $38 million for Bellefonte in hopes of using it for a new, non-nuclear technology to generate power. The company says its system uses electromagnetic induction energy fields to heat water indirectly and produce steam that would turn turbines and generate electricity at Bellefonte. Chardos said he would still like to see the site used to generate electricity by nuclear power, but he can’t be too picky. “It’s all about the jobs,” he said. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
