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TVA taps Bechtel for Watts Bar job(Chattanooga Times (Free Press, TN) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Oct. 16--The Tennessee Valley Authority has picked the nation's biggest nuclear contractor to oversee completion of the last nuclear reactor of its type to be built in the United States. TVA announced Monday that Bechtel Power Corp. will be paid up to $1 billion to direct the remaining design and construction of the Unit 2 reactor at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant. Bechtel, working in conjunction with Sargent & Lundy and Washington Group International, will hire more than 2,000 contract workers, including up to 300 engineers and support staff to be stationed in Knoxville. Although TVA's nuclear engineering staff is based at the agency's power headquarters in Chattanooga, most of the engineering support work for Watts Bar will be performed by Bechtel contractors at a TVA office in Knoxville. TVA spokesman John Moulton said TVA is making space available in its largely empty East Tower in Knoxville for the Bechtel workers rather than vacant office space in Chattanooga, "because there is more contiguous space for 200 to 300 workers needed for this task. "Engineering support for TVA's entire nuclear program will still be based in Chattanooga," Mr. Moulton said. At its peak in two years, more than 2,300 contract and TVA workers are expected to be hired in the completion of Watts Bar Unit 2. Most of those workers will be stationed at the plant near Spring City, Tenn., or in Knoxville, and collectively the workers will pump more than $10 million a year in the East Tennessee economy over the next five years. TVA President Tom Kilgore said Bechtel was selected from among five engineering companies that submitted bids as part of "a comprehensive and rigorous competitive-bidding process." Bechtel also was the lead contractor in conducting a $20 million engineering study for TVA on the feasibility and costs of finishing the unit 2 reactor at Watts Bar. That study found TVA could finish the Unit 2 reactor, which is now about 60 percent finished, for another $2.49 billion. The federal utility spent more than $6 billion to finish Unit 1 in 1996 as the last new commercial reactor built in America. TVA spent $1.7 billion toward the Unit 2 project before work was halted on the reactor in 1985. TVA plans to finish the Unit 2 reactor by 2013, or nearly 40 years after construction first began on the unit. The completion of the second reactor is expected to be the last unit completed among the U.S. plants begun during the 1960s and 1970s. "We are honored to be selected by TVA for this historic assignment," Jim Reinsch, president of Bechtel's nuclear power business, said in a prepared statement. "This cost-effective project will provide clean, safe and reliable power for TVA's customers and demonstrate the importance of nuclear power as a contributor to meeting America's energy needs in the coming decades." Bechtel has provided engineering and construction support for 88 of the country's 104 nuclear reactors, including all six of TVA's operating reactors. But Stephen Smith, executive director of the anti-nuclear Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, suggested the contractor has a conflict of interest in conducting both the feasibility study for Watts Bar and then being selected to build the plant. "There clearly is a vested interested for Bechtel in coming up with the numbers that justify TVA spending the money on Watts Bar 2 and now being awarded a billion-dollar contract to do that work," Dr. Smith said. "We find that highly suspect." Mr. Moulton said Bechtel's engineering study of Watts Bar did not determine whether the unit would be finished but was designed to develop a cost-effective strategy for its completion. "We took all kinds of precautions and wrote into the contract that all of the information that Bechtel developed would be shared with any other bidder for this (construction) project," he said. Dr. Smith also questioned why TVA would again use Bechtel for a major engineering project after TVA's inspector general found in 2005 that Bechtel had overcharged TVA $252,462 out of a $602,611 contract for a study of the Browns Ferry Unit 1 during the 1990s. "There are no consequences to overcharging TVA in the past," Dr. Smith said. Bechtel agreed to pay back the overcharge to TVA in 2005, according to TVA records. E-mail Dave Flessner at [email protected] To see more of the Chattanooga Times/Free Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.timesfreepress.com. Copyright (c) 2007, Chattanooga Times/Free Press, Tenn. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |