45 Nuclear Plants

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March 2016 – Update sent in from user on TVA Browns Ferry Unit 1 Restart Project

The NRC’s quaterly pulibc 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.