TVA

There has been a lot of talk of next-generation reactors in the U.S. "nuclear revival," but some plans for new nuclear power generation are looking back rather than ahead.

Alongside a multitude of pending applications for new nuclear reactors, there is a move to restart construction at sites where the work began decades ago only to be abandoned before completion.

On Monday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a hearing on challenges to the reinstatement of construction permits for one such project. It involves permits granted to the Tennessee Valley Authority to build the Bellefonte nuclear reactors, two reactors that were started near Hollywood, Ala., in 1974 but never finished.

After a flood of wet coal ash swept from a power plant containment pond in December 2008, contaminating a river and covering 300 acres of eastern Tennessee, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it would decide whether to issue new coal ash regulations by the end of 2009.

As that deadline approached last month, however, the agency admitted its findings would be delayed "due to the complexity of the analysis."

If it were simply a question of how best to protect the public, the decision would have been made weeks ago, health and environmental advocates say. But it appears cost has become as significant a factor as protection.

After a dam burst at its Kingston, Tenn., power plant last December and dumped more than a billion gallons of toxic coal ash sludge into a nearby community and river, the federal Tennessee Valley Authority decided to change the way it stores its coal waste, transitioning from wet landfills like the one that failed to dry storage of ash.

Now, a company is pushing a plan to use dry coal ash from the Kingston plant to fill an abandoned coal mine in Tennessee, but environmentalists are raising concerns about the proposal's health risks.

Smith Mountain Solutions, a company owned by the principals behind Wright Brothers Construction of Charleston, Tenn., has proposed taking dry ash from TVA's Kingston plant and using it to fill a former surface mine 20 miles away atop Smith Mountain in Cumberland County.

Under pressure from environmental groups, the EPA shifted course today and published the government’s once-secret list of 44 power plant coal ash impoundments that pose the highest danger to human life if they were to break.

The list is a reminder of just how unclean coal power is, not just through the pollutants and greenhouse gases that its power plants pump into the air but also in the residue left behind.

These impoundments hold millions of gallons of fly ash, bottom ash, coal slag and flue gas desulferization produced as waste by coal-fired power plants. The mixture can contain arsenic, selenium, cadmium, lead and mercury that can pose a danger to human health, water supplies and the environment.

The 44 impoundments on the list – largely in the eastern mountains, but also in Arizona, Indiana, Illinois and Montana – aren’t necessarily in danger of breaking, the EPA stressed. They made the list out of 427 nationwide because of their location and what might happen if they did.

“The presence of liquid coal ash impoundments near our homes, schools and business could pose a serious risk to life and property in the event of an impoundment rupture,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in releasing the list.

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• Stacy Morford's blog
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The Tennessee Valley Authority's Inspector General released a critical audit this week on the federal company's response to last December's massive ash spill disaster at its Kingston power plant in eastern Tennessee's Roane County.

The incident involved a failure in a coal ash containment pond that released more than a billion gallons of toxic waste into a nearby community and river.

The interim report finds that TVA:

* Failed to implement the National Incident Management System in accordance with a Homeland Security Presidential Directive, which hampered communications and delayed emergency response following the spill.

* Released inaccurate and inconsistent information to the media.

* Failed to communicate claims policies and decisions to victims of the spill in a timely manner.

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• Sue Sturgis's blog
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