Watts Bar Completion

Bechtel is completing construction of a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) nuclear power plant that was placed on hold nearly 20 years ago.

Unit 2 at Watts Bar in Spring City, Tennessee, was about two-thirds complete in 1988 when construction was halted due to a projected decrease in demand for electricity. In 2007, with demand again increasing, TVA decided to complete construction and awarded the project to Bechtel.  

Unit 2 is a pressurized water reactor, in which water heated by nuclear fuel rods makes steam that drives a turbine to generate power. When it goes on line in 2015, the unit will add nearly 1,200 megawatts to TVA’s power system—enough electricity to power some 650,000 homes.

The Watts Bar Unit 2 project follows the 2007 restart of Unit 1 at TVA’s Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama, for which Bechtel provided detailed engineering, technical services, system testing, and start-up services. Browns Ferry had been shut down in 1985. With the restart it became the first nuclear generator of the 21st century in the United States.

In 2006, Bechtel helped replace four aging steam generators at Watts Bar’s Unit 1 reactor, following similar work at Unit 1 of TVA’s Sequoyah nuclear plant in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee.