Brown's Ferry Re-Start on Schedule for May 2007

That's the word from our friends at the TVA. This project is very important to the American nuclear industry, and I'm proud of the work TVA has completed thus far. Keep it up, I'm looking forward to next May.

Click here for more on the TVA's nuclear program.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Energy, Electricity, TVA

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Original_Jeff said…

The NRC's quaterly public meeting with the TVA Browns Ferry Unit 1 Restart Project Management was on Thursday. Here are a few notes I took (I am not an engineer, so sorry for mistakes!):
- The nuclear fuel arrived on site on July 17 from GE.
- Expecting a December 2006 fuel load.
- Power generation is on schedule for May 2007. There was some hinting that this might happen earlier.
- The $1.8 billion restart project is on budget.
- Browns Ferry staffing was at 898 persons prior to restart. They are at 1015 now. They forecast a need for 1047 staff members to support 3-unit operation.
- About 2,300 contractor employees on site.
- Stone & Webster is the prime construction contractor.
- Bechtel is the prime design contractor.
- NRC will have an additional permanent on site inspector (2 -> 3), since it is their custom to have the same number of resident inspectors as operating units.
- There is a tremendous amount of testing and inspection, and internal and external approvals required as each of the many subsystems are turned over to the plant operators. (The subsystems of the Unit 1 are "owned" by the restart project, and the restart project sort of has to "prove" that the subsystems are appropriately designed and constructed and inspected/tested before the "operating plant" will accept them for operation.)
- The project involved 605,529 feet of cabling, of which 83% is installed.
- There are 41,038 cable terminations, of which 89% are complete.
- There is 15,137 feet of small bore piping, of which 96% are complete.
- I gathered that much of the unit's active equipment was either replaced or sent to the vendor for refurbishment.

August 5, 2006 at 3:32 PM

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