Continuing serious problems with USA’s Watts Bar Unit 2, last old nuclear reactor of the 20th century

Watts Bar Unit 2, last old reactor of the 20th century: a cautionary tale, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Don SaferSara Barczak, 8 Nov 16  More than four decades after construction began in 1973, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is finally getting close to starting up the Watts Bar Unit 2 nuclear reactor. Only final tests stand in the way of it receiving an operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). While the TVA and the nuclear industry describe Watts Bar 2 as “the first new nuclear generation of the 21st Century,” in fact the TVA resuscitated a demonstrably unsafe 1960s-era ice condenser design that was abandoned decades ago by the rest of the nuclear industry. Mismanagement and construction problems have driven the project’s price tag up with billions of dollars in cost overruns. Safety continues to be compromised as the NRC is allowing the TVA to delay post-Fukushima seismic design upgrades indefinitely. Rather than exemplifying a fine technological achievement, the history of Watts Bar Units 1 and 2 is a cautionary tale of the worst pitfalls of nuclear power and the federal regulatory system.

This pair of nuclear reactors has a unique distinction. Back in 1996, Watts Bar Unit 1 was the last reactor completed in the United States, at a hefty $6.8 billion. No other reactors have come online since. In fact, according to the NRC, eight US reactors have permanently shut down since Watts Bar 1 was licensed…….

Watts Bar 2 comes from a federally owned utility that has a history of delays, problems, and fiscal irresponsibility when it comes to nuclear power. This history raises the question of why Watts Bar 2 has survived such a long time and whether it should ever be allowed to open. It is a saga of delays and cost overruns, antiquated designs, inadequate quality control and oversight, failure to implement post-Fukushima upgrades, and a deficient safety culture, among other problems—all at a time when there is still no place for long-term storage of the nuclear waste that will be generated. And because the TVA manufactures tritium for use in America’s nuclear weapons, there will inevitably be greater releases of tritium into the air and water of the region—natural resources which already receive four times as much tritium as originally expected.

Ironically, Watts Bar 2 comes when the large-scale development of new, truly clean energy sources is a burgeoning reality. Created as an innovative model for the nation in the 1930s, the Tennessee Valley Authority has become an entrenched, top-down bureaucracy wedded to the past by its continuing embrace of nuclear and other polluting energy sources in the 21st century.

Schedule delays and cost increases. Watts Bar Unit 2 has the longest construction history of any reactor in the world. …….

Let us look at some of the reasons for the delays and overruns in turn.

Problematic, antiquated design. …….

Quality control concerns at Watts Bar……..

Post-Fukushima design upgrades postponed…….

Watts Bar and nuclear weapons. …….

A safer, less risky future is possible. Ratepayers, utilities, and regulators should heed this cautionary tale, whose lessons are only reinforced by recent efforts to build ever more costly and delayed new reactors here in the United States, including SCANA’s V.C. Summer reactor in South Carolina, and the Southern Company’s Plant Vogtle reactors in Georgia. (And abroad at Flamanville, France; Olkiluoto, Finland; and Hinkley Point, Great Britain.) New nuclear power generation is turning out to be the failed technology of the 21st century…….. http://thebulletin.org/watts-bar-unit-2-last-old-reactor-20th-century-cautionary-tale8783