How Browns Ferry powers the region — and stays prepared
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Seth Brooks explains the plan in the plant's simulator, which mimics exactly the control room for one of its nuclear units. Photo: Derek Lacey/Axios
The Tennessee Valley Authority stays ready for anything at Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant.
Why it matters: Just how the juice gets to our wires can often fade into the background, but the third largest nuclear power generator in the country has been steadily and safely keeping the lights on in the Valley for 50 years.
Catch up quick: TVA officials at Browns Ferry met with media Tuesday for an update on its nuclear strategy and emergency response plans.
- The plant produces more than 3,900 megawatts (MW), serving as a base load supplier for TVA, meaning it always runs close to 100%. That accounts for 20% of TVA's total power generation.
What they're saying: "We don't expect that there will ever be any need to implement any of these emergency plans, but we go ahead and plan like they're going to happen," Seth Brooks, site engineering director at Browns Ferry, said. "We have a team that's always ready to respond."
- Since the first of the plant's three units went online in 1974, no emergencies requiring evacuations have occurred, according to Brooks.
- Each year, TVA mails out more than 40,000 calendars with emergency data, maps, evacuation routes and contacts to homes within the plant's 10-mile radius. It's all online, too.
Zoom in: "Our operators are drilled on these emergency procedures on almost a weekly basis," said Scott Odom, program manager for emergency preparedness plan and procedures.
Yes, but: People in Huntsville aren't in danger, Brooks said. Per the calendar info, it's impossible for nuclear fuel at the plant to explode like a bomb.
- That's because the thimble-sized uranium dioxide tablets the plant uses for fuel (each of which has the energy output of a ton of coal) are only 3% to 5% fissionable uranium. Nuclear weapons contain more than 90% fissionable uranium.
Zoom out: Nuclear power is on Huntsville's radar, as Redstone Arsenal lobbies for the U.S. Army's Project Janus, which would construct an under-20MW microreactor to carry some of its 75MW power load.
- As data center construction and economic development increase the demand for power, suppliers like TVA are planning more generation.
- In Jackson County, TVA is aiming to construct up to 1,600MW in a Pumped Storage Hydropower which still needs board approval, per spokesperson Clarissa McClain.
- The TVA board voted earlier this year to spend as much as $200 million to prepare for potential small modular reactor construction, and in May became the first utility to apply for an SMR construction permit for its Clinch River Nuclear Site in Tennessee.
"TVA is looking at a lot of different possibilities with large nuclear and small nuclear," Brooks said.