With the multiple articles and opinions floating around, it’s hard to make sense of how nuclear power affects Hamilton County. Ray Golden, manager of nuclear communications at Tennessee Valley Authority acts as a resource to help ease citizens’ minds about this power source.
When atoms of uranium are split, they release a tiny amount of heat and neutrons. One atom splitting gives three neutrons. Those, in turn, split three atoms of uranium, which gives you nine, and so in very short order there are billions of atoms splitting, each one releasing a tiny bit of heat to become a very powerful energy source, he says.
“Fuel pellets” containing uranium get extremely hot at the atomic level and transfer their heat energy to water, which sits around them. The water eventually boils into steam and that steam is used to spin large mechanical turbines that turn a mechanical generator, and electricity is made.
“It’s really just another way of heating water into steam. You are using nuclear fission, or the splitting of uranium atoms, versus coal or oil or natural gas,” Golden says.
In Hamilton County, nu-clear power comes from the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant in Soddy Daisy, about 25 miles north of downtown Chattanooga. On this site, there are two large nuclear reactors, each capable of generating about 1,150 megawatts of electricity. One megawatt is the comparable energy equivalent of 10,000 one hundred watt light bulbs burning simultaneously. These units are able to meet the needs of 1.4 million homes and businesses in Hamilton and surrounding counties, Golden says.
The benefit of nuclear power is the concentration of fuel itself. Golden says this is the reason why, even given the events in Japan, it’s likely that our country will continue to use and support the use of nuclear power.
One fuel pellet contains millions of atoms of uranium, is about the size of the tip of your pinkie finger, and would be the energy equivalent of 150 gallons of oil or 2,000 pounds of coal.
“Pound per pound, it’s the most concentrated energy source in the world and is the clean energy source in the sense that you are not combusting a fuel or burning the byproducts of a fuel,” Golden says.
The only difference between nuclear power fuel when it goes into the reactor and when it comes out is the radioactive nature of the product. When fuel pellets are new, they can be held, with no risk, but once they go into the reactor, they turn into other radioactive elements at the atomic level and can never be touched by human hands again.
From that point on, all movement and storage will always be done under large amounts of water, concrete, or steel that act as barriers to the biological effects of radiation, Golden says.
Critics of nuclear power address the weight generated, but, Golden says, people would be surprised to know that if all the used nuclear fuel that has been consumed was to be laid out on Neyland Stadium field, it would be the length and width of the football stadium and about 20 feet tall.
There’s also a tremendous amount of quality control that goes with nuclear power, Golden says.
“The fact that it is radioactive and our senses can’t detect radiation is something we have to be very careful [with] as we work with it and make sure that you always rededicate yourself to safety every day.”
The Bellefonte Nuclear Site near Scottsboro, Ala. is composed of two plants that were partially constructed in the ’70s. Due to the recession in the mid ’80s and the reduced need for electrical power, the site is unfinished. The Bellefonte units are being considered again with the advent of Volkswagen and other large manufacturing facilities that will need more power in the next 10 years, as well as the aging of coal plans and the increased needs of customers across the area, Golden says.
“We think it’s in our customers’ best interests we are considering perhaps finishing the construction on at least one of those units at Bellefonte, and we were thinking that the board of directors of TVA might take that up in our April board meeting,” Golden says.
“The other possibility is that they might defer that to wait a little longer to see what the final outcome in Japan is and what the significance of what changes, if anything, there may be in the regulatory process of constructing and operating nuclear plants.”
Japan’s nuclear disaster demonstrates the importance of the emergency plan, Golden says.
“We hope people understand the benefit that nuclear provides and that it’s cheap, reliable electric power that helps us be competitive in the Tennessee Valley from a business standpoint,” Golden says. “The flipside of that is that we have to have an emergency plan, and in that emergency plan, there is a role for those individuals in that low probability, but possible, worst case scenario.”