TVA to consider completing Watts Bar Unit 2 nuclear reactor.

[NNadir]

Recently I wrote that the TVA will be returning the Brown's Ferry Unit 1 reactor to service more than 20 years after it was shut down.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x70652

In this thread when asked whether I thought refurbishing reactors shut for poor performance or accidents was a good idea, I demurred, arguing that it may be cheaper to build new reactors with fewer problems.

There is a second class of existing reactors however that exist: Those that were abandoned during construction. This class includes Watts Bar Unit 2 and Seabrooke Unit 2, both of which were abandoned because of public opposition. Of course, increasingly the public is being influenced by the harsh realities of climate change, and attitudes toward nuclear power are rapidly changing to positive terms, as they must if we are to survive.

Along these lines, TVA has decided to study whether to complete Watts Bar Unit 2, which was 80% complete, but which has subsequently been cannibalized for spare parts.

http://www.tva.gov/news/releases/julsep06/wattsbar_unit2.htm

A study of this option will commence in 2007.

Some part of me would like to see the second reactor at Seabrook, New Hampshire completed, because I feel some responsibility for its abandonment, having been a member of the nuclear opposition in that era. I have no idea as to whether that reactor, however, would represent, on technical or economic grounds, a viable candidate for completion however. I suspect it wouldn't. I do know that the Northeast is burning a lot of natural gas, primarily in Maine and Massachusetts, but I believe that Unit 2 has been cannibalized and is scheduled for demolition. Too bad...