Plant manager Cletus sitting with his brother and chief nuclear engineer Cletus Jr.
Utility officials restarted a long-dormant nuclear reactor Tuesday, 22 years after it was shut down because of safety concerns at what was once the nation’s largest nuclear power plant.
The restart capped a five-year, $1.8 billion renovation at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant.
Plant spokesman Craig Beasley said there were no reports of problems. Extensive testing remained to be done before electricity from the Unit 1 reactor would begin flowing on transmission lines. The plant’s other two reactors remained at full power.
The entire three-reactor plant was idled in 1985 amid mounting worries over plant safety and management. The Unit 2 and 3 reactors were restarted in the 1990s after extensive renovations and upgrades.
A watchdog group pointed to the plant’s history of problems and questioned whether the reactor should be operating at all.
The South will rise again, in radioactive flames!
Your picture is not quite accurate for a “core meltdown”.
Remember that NASA is in Huntsville. I would suspect they know what they are doing.
Powerplants are actually pretty simple…
1. “Your picture is not quite accurate for a “core meltdown””
So, have you been working as a humorless wet blanket for long, or is this your first day?
Oh no! Can’t trust anything in Alabama. it’s not like they have the best car factories in America there. Plus this will lower carbon emissions and energy rates.
No… I worked building NUKES… mo betta than fossile fuel powerplants..
I mean you should see the crap coming out of the stacks!!!
We could use more nukes…
If, while mowing the lawn, you find a discarded nuclear fuel rod, YOU MIGHT BE A REDNECK!
Brown’s Ferry had its problems, Alabamians who worked there were the first to report that when it happened and the first to call for it to be fixed. Keep thinking those of us in the Deep South don’t have a clue – those of us who live quiet comfortable lives in rural Alabama with our high-speed net access, college educations, low cost of living, and good jobs hope we keep our little secret about how great life is here from everyone else – maybe ya’ll will stay away and ‘leave us be.’ My Alabama buddies who are also regular dvorak readers, twit fans, digg users, etc., are having a laugh at ya’ll.
Hey Dvorak,
There are plenty of people in Alabama with much greater capabilities than blogging and writing an occasional magazine article! Yes Alabama is full of rednecks, but at least they don’t enjoy the smell of their own farts as you Californians do!
from the original AP story:
“Extensive testing remained to be done before electricity from the Unit 1 reactor would begin flowing on transmission lines.”
You do whatever you want – but me? – when electricity starts flowing from the friggin’ reactor, I don’ thin’ I wanna even be in the same area code, Lucy…
7,
Improve your diet and you WILL enjoy your own farts.
Anyone else find it disturbing in the photo that the guy on the left is wearing a ‘Got Root?’ tshirt?
I think you misspelled “nuke-u-ler.”
Oh come on. Everyone knows that those of us who live in the south are a bunch of toothless rednecks. It’s hard for people on the phone to understand us because of the ever-present banjo playing in the background, but at least we save a lot of money on flooring. Sawdust and hay are cheap.
Besides, after DU posts that I never again have to feel even a twinge of guilt posting broad sweeping generalizations about the granola bowl that is California.
12,
its better then listening to some Hini trying to speak English on a HELP LINE.
8…they split the atoms, and the freed electrons come down the wires, right?
The protons go in those big towers, and the neutrons get put in casks or that cave in Nevada. The muons get fed to cats. See, it’s simple.
And let me tell ya…you guys just go on thinking the native folks in ‘Bama are dumb, and they’ll eat your friggin’ lunch and steal your girlfriend, too. If this were Ohio…now we’re talking about a dumb state.
400 more nuke plants & we can tell tell arabs to smell their own farts.
That privilege would be worth any risk.
15, exactly. Hell, put one in my backya….. oh, wait, I do have one in my backyard. And another 25 miles away. Well anyway, we all need a neighborhood nuke plant. Lots of good jobs that can’t be outsourced.
Where the hell will my party’s base come from after the plant goes boom?
#9, great comment. More coffee on my keyboard though, thanks to you.
#17, Mississippi and Utah are still pretty backwards I hear. ‘specially Utah.
Don’t forget about Kansas and its State Board of Education.
Wow, I really don’t see what the big deal is about this article, other than a chance to goof on residents of Alabama. 2 of the 3 reactors have been running since the 90s, and they’re about to turn on the 3rd one after renovation and upgrades–big deal. Too bad the “hippie brigade” won’t let the US build any new reactors to try and help with the energy “crisis” we’re in. There hasn’t been a new reactor built since 1979 because of all the so-called watchdog groups that just can’t abide anything with the word “nuclear” in it, because it obviously will lead to the word “bomb” and it will ending up killing millions of people. You know, like no other nuclear plant in the US has ever done previously.