SODDY-DAISY, Tenn. – The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Sequoyah Nuclear Plant Unit 1 safely began a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage Friday evening after generating more than 13.2 billion kilowatt-hours of carbon-free energy during its most recent, 521-day operational cycle.
“TVA is a nuclear energy leader, and planned outages like this one allow us to complete necessary work to upgrade and make improvements to plant systems, helping ensure we continue delivering low-cost and reliable American energy to power homes, businesses, AI and advanced manufacturing,” said Kevin Michael, TVA Sequoyah site vice president. “The team will load 72 new nuclear fuel assemblies and perform key maintenance activities that can only be safely completed with the unit offline.”
Planning for this outage began more than three years ago as part of the site’s standard work management practices to ensure all work can be completed safely and as scheduled.
“With the growth we continue to see in our service area, we know that reliability and resiliency matter more than ever and Sequoyah’s highly skilled workforce is making the most of this opportunity to ensure Unit 1 continues to operate safely,” added Michael.
More than 12,800 work activities are planned, including loading new fuel assemblies, performing inspections of reactor components, maintenance of plant equipment and installing unit enhancements.
Sequoyah Unit 1 is one of seven TVA nuclear reactors in the Valley. TVA’s nuclear fleet is the third largest in the nation, safely and reliably providing more than 40% of all electricity used by more than 10 million people in the Tennessee Valley.
Nuclear energy is critical to our nation’s energy security. TVA is implementing a Nuclear Life Extension plan, with more than 400 projects in progress, that will add up to 244 MW of additional generation to help ensure our region’s energy security.