NEI Nuclear Notes

The suspense and tension are over : After hearing about 70 speakers support or oppose nuclear power and the completion of the half-finished Bellefonte Nuclear Plant, the TVA board voted unanimously on Thursday to restart construction. So it wasn’t even a near thing. But that meeting sounds like it was pretty interesting. The local paper, The Scottsboro (Ala.) Daily Sentinel, sent writer Ken Bonner over to take a listen : "We're very excited to see it," Jackson County Economic Development Authority President and CEO, Goodrich "Dus" Rogers said. "Now we move into a capitalized project rather than one just in the planning stages." Rogers, and a group of 26 other people from northeast Alabama who attended the meeting were excited with the outcome. The contingent included 22 people from Jackson County including governmental, business and civic leaders, four from Fort Payne and Guntersville Mayor Bob Hembree. Jackson County is home to Bel...

I’m not sure if it belittles the importance of the event to call it, well, suspenseful : Later this month [this Friday, to be exact], the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority could take up a proposal to complete the Bellefonte nuclear power plant in northeast Alabama. TVA administrators are conducting a campaign to gain public support for the project and nuclear energy in general despite a dangerous incident at a Japanese plant this year. TVA had already put off making this decision once: TVA staff says the most reliable and least costly option for future growth in electricity needs is nuclear power and completing the Bellefonte plant in Hollywood, Ala., for an estimated $4 billion to $5 billion. The board’s vote on the proposal, which had been expected this past spring, was put off after a nuclear fiasco in Japan. “Dangerous incident,” “nuclear fiasco.” We may in for a long period of creative description-making for the accident at Fukushima. I’m not crazy abou...

Details from Jacksonville.com .

From the AP : The Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans a public meeting Tuesday night at Northeast Alabama Community College on a proposed nuclear plant in Jackson County. A group of power utilities is expected to submit an application to the NRC on Oct. 31 for a license to build and run two reactors at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Bellefonte site near Hollywood. As part of that group, TVA spokesman John Moulton says the agency would be the licensee because it owns the site. NRC spokesman Roger Hannah said Tuesday's meeting will be for informational purposes only. He said the public is invited to ask questions. For directions to the campus, click here .

Details from We Support Lee .