TVA's Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant

Near Decatur, AL is the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, with three boiling water reactors. Units 2 and 3 are still on line, and studies are underway now to restart unit 1. Unit 3 capacity is given as 1,118 Megawatts, the other two are similar. According to an April 10, 2002 TVA News Release, this unit produced a world record 17.8 BILLION killowatt hours of electricity over a continuos 669 day period, before being shut down for a scheduled refueling. This is the second longest continuous run for a commercial reactor in the US, being second only to Carolina Power and Light's Brunswick Reactor at 707 days. That reactor is rated for 820 Megawatts.

The Browns Ferry personnel then followed up by refueling the reactor, performing some maintenance and modifications, and of course, many, many tests and inspections, and got the reactor back on line in just 14 days and 16 hours, another US record for the shortest refuling outage.

We got this one shot of the plant on the way to Wilson Dam. Note the tall tower: it is used for venting hydrogen, highly explosive but not otherwise harmful. We think it must be a by-product of the boiling water process, because you don't see these at pressurized water plants.