Watts Bar starts maintenance, refueling outage
The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar Nuclear Plant Unit 2 began a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage on Saturday, Oct. 28, after producing more than 6.2 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity since the start of commercial operations in October 2016.
“Our work during this outage will position Watts Bar Unit 2 to continue generating low-cost, carbon-free nuclear energy to reliably power daily life across the Tennessee Valley for the next 18 months,” said Paul Simmons, site vice president. “This outage puts Unit 2 on a routine 18-month refueling cycle that aligns with the other seven nuclear units in our TVA fleet. Our goal is a year-and-a-half of safe, around-the-clock, full-power generation from the nation’s newest nuclear unit.”
An additional 1,000 TVA and contract employees are supplementing the site’s regular staff during the outage……
