TVA Fails to Tell the Facts, Intentionally Fails to Report Construction Costs, Petition Filed

TVA's Bellefonte Dream, 2 AP 1000 reactors, costs were under estimated. The truth has not been told. Reactor plans have not been approved. The TVA has not approved this project and has spent millions upon millions of dollars with no approvals of any sort. Meanwhile the TVA is going further into debt.

TVA's original Bellefonte Nuclear Plants The two partially built 1256 MWe pressurized water reactors on the Bellefonte site were made by Babcock and Wilcox. The reactor pair are called a 205 design due to the number of fuel assemblies in the core. The original construction permits for Bellefonte were approved by the NRC in 1974. The TVA deferred completion of the plant in 1988 due to an over estimation of power needs in the area plus massive cost overruns. Unit 1 was 88% complete and unit 2 was approximately 58% complete.

The TVA has not been truthful in their filings to the NRC for the building of a Nuclear Power Plant at Bellefonte, Alabama. TVA intentionally underestimated costs for the construction of a pair of reactors at Bellefonte so as not to list alternative/sustainable energy resources available.

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BLUE RIDGE ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE LEAGUE
www.BREDL.org PO Box 88 Glendale Springs, North Carolina 28629 BREDL@skybest.com (336) 982-2691 office, (336) 977-0852 cell

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DECEMBER 16, 2008

GROUPS DISPUTE TVA COST FIGURES
NEW LEGAL CHALLENGE AT BELLEFONTE

Today citizens’ groups announced new cost arguments in their lawsuit against nuclear power at Tennessee Valley Authority’s Bellefonte site. The December 15th filing charges that TVA provided inaccurate cost information in its environmental report. In an 18-page request to the three-judge licensing board, the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, the Bellefonte Efficiency and Sustainability Team and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy charged that TVA violated the National Environmental Policy Act.
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The petition states that TVA’s cost estimates and comparisons are grossly inaccurate for four reasons: 1) TVA failed to include the full range of costs for nuclear power, 2) TVA made apples-to-oranges comparisons with coal- and gas-fired options, 3) TVA improperly selected nuclear as the best available option, and 4) TVA excluded reasonable alternatives for getting electricity at lower cost. Under the law TVA must compare the impacts of nuclear power at Bellefonte with available alternatives. The comparison must include construction costs and the costs of power delivered to customers.
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Louis Zeller, the League’s Science Director, said “TVA's failure to estimate costs accurately spells trouble for its customers in seven states.” He continued, “We’ve been through enough bailouts already; let’s not continue the nuclear one.”
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Dr. Ross McCluney, a member of the Bellefonte Efficiency and Sustainability Team, said, “Considering the wave of energy efficiency technology and the clean renewable energy sources on the horizon, a nuclear plant at Bellefonte would be obsolete before it generated the first watt of power. To continue pushing for nuclear power in the U.S. just makes no sense.” Dr. McCluney is a research physicist for SunPine Consulting in Chattanooga and a retired Principal Research Scientist at the University of Central Florida.

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TVA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff have ten days to respond to the groups’ petition. Earlier this year TVA requested a license to build two new reactors at its Bellefonte site in northern Alabama. The League, BEST and SACE intervened in June and the NRC held a hearing in Scottsboro in July. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will hold further hearings on four of the groups’ legal arguments.
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