Groups aim to stop TVA nuke plans
The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, the Bellefonte Efficiency and Sustainability Team and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy asked federal regulators to suspend a request by the Tennessee Valley Authority to renew construction permits at Bellefonte.
The groups said TVA has not addressed the possible environmental impact of work at Bellefonte, along the Tennessee River at the town of Hollywood.
The utility had no immediate response. TVA has not decided whether to finish the two existing reactors at Bellefonte, which was never completed, but it is considering such a project.
Ken Clark, a spokesman with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the government was in the early stages of reviewing requests to reinstate construction permits for the unfinished Bellefonte reactors and to possibly build two more reactors at the plant.
"There have been no decisions yet," he said. "It's all under consideration."
TVA supplies electricity to about 8.8 million consumers in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
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LONDON - A Rolls-Royce (RR.L) design for a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) will likely receive UK regulatory approval by mid-2024 and be able to produce grid power by 2029, Paul Stein, chairman of Rolls-Royce Small Modular Reactors.
The British government asked its nuclear regulator to start the approval process in March, having backed Rolls-Royce’s $546 million funding round in November to develop the country’s first SMR reactor.
Policymakers hope SMRs will help cut dependence on fossil fuels and lower carbon emissions.
Speaking to Reuters in an interview conducted virtually, Stein said the regulatory “process has been kicked off, and will likely be complete in the middle of…
