18 Jan (NucNet): Westinghouse Electric Company has won a contract to support the completion of unit two at the Watts Bar nuclear power plant in the US state of Tennessee.
The contract, announced today and valued at about 200 million US dollars (about 137 million euro), includes the upgrade and replacement of most instrumentation and control systems.
Watts Bar-2, a Westinghouse pressurised water reactor operated by utility Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), was about 80 percent complete when construction was halted in 1985 partly because of a projected fall in electricity demand.
However, in August 2007 the TVA board approved completing the unit at an estimated total cost of USD 2.49 billion with Bechtel Power Corp leading the engineering, procurement and construction work.
TVA expects the project to take 54 months with commercial operation scheduled for early 2012. The project will add about 1,200 megawatts of electric generating capacity to the TVA system.
Unit one at Watts Bar is a 1,121-megawatt PWR. It was the last commercial nuclear unit in the US to begin commercial operation, in 1996.
This report was compiled for NucNet by John Shepherd.
>>Related reports in the NucNet database (available to subscribers)
New Reactor Will Cost USD 2.2 Billion, Says Tennessee Valley Study (News No. 168, 7 November 2005)
TVA Approves Plan To Complete Second Unit At Watts Bar (News No. 180, 2 August 2007)
TVA Chooses Bechtel For Watts Bar 2 Completion (News in Brief No. 33, 17 October 2007)
