Sequoyah Nuclear Generating Station

The Sequoyah nuclear power plant is located on 525 acres (2.1 km²)located 7 miles east of Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, and 20 miles north of Chattanooga, abutting Chickamauga Lake, on the Tennessee River. The facility is owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The plant has two Westinghouse pressurized water reactors. Sequoyah units 1 & 2, as well as their sister plant at Watts Bar, both have ice condensed containment systems. In case of a large loss of coolant accident, steam generated by the leak is dirrected toward borated ice which helps condense the steam creating a lower pressure, allowing for a smaller containment building.

The first reactor began operation in September 1980, followed by the second a year later. Within months of starting operations, some 420,000 liters of radioactive coolant leaked due to operator error and several workers were exposed to radiation, but the spill was kept inside the containment buildingFact|date=November 2007.

Sequoyah's two units have a winter net dependable capacity of 2,333 megawattsSecurities & Exchange Commission filing. Available at http://www.sec.gov/] , making Sequoyah the most productive of TVA's 4 nuclear plants. Sequoyah is the second-most powerful electric plant in the entire TVA system, second only to the Cumberland coal-fired plant northwest of Nashville.Fact|date=November 2007 Following the restart of Brown's Ferry Unit 1, that plant again became most productive at 3,440 MW.

The operating license of Sequoyah's Unit 1 expires in 2020. Unit 2's operating license expires in 2021.

TVA constructed dry cask storage facilities at Sequoyah and purchased special storage containers for the purpose of storing spent nuclear fuel. The storage facilities have been approved by the NRC.

TVA's Sequoyah operating license was modified in Sept. 2002 to allow TVA to irradiate tritium-producing burnable absorber rods at Sequoyah for the U.S. Department of Energy. The process of irradiating tritium-producing rods produces tritium, which is used in nuclear weapons. TVA began irradiating tritium-producing rods at its Watts Bar Nuclear Generating Station in 2003. As of February 2007, TVA had no plans to produce tritium at Sequoyah.

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External links

* [http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/sequoyah.html DoE Page]