Tennessee's two US senators are calling on the Tennessee Valley Authority to accelerate its efforts to develop a small modular nuclear reactor project at its Clinch River Nuclear site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, both Republicans, urged the TVA to move forward with its small modular reactor (SMR) project and make an outside hire to replace retiring President and CEO Jeff Lyash, saying the federal power authority could lead the nation's nuclear energy "revival" necessary to meet growing demand for electricity.
"Nuclear energy is the only viable solution, but the industry has been stagnant for decades," the senators wrote in a March 20 commentary in Power magazine. "TVA could be to the nuclear race what NASA was to the space race."
The TVA holds the nation's only early site permit for an SMR, and is pursuing what could be the first utility-scale SMR in the US using the GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy Inc. BWRX-300 design. Lyash has said the TVA is in the final stages of a license and construction permit application it plans to submit this year to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
But that early site permit is not enough, the senators said.
"Having the ticket to build the first made-in-America SMR won't take TVA very far if the status quo of a hidebound bureaucracy gets in the way," Blackburn and Hagerty said in their commentary. "As it stands now, TVA and its leadership can't carry the weight of this moment."
Senators call for leadership changes
Blackburn and Hagerty said the TVA board of directors lacks what it takes to "meet a challenge" requiring "visionary industrial leaders," among other criticisms. Board members are confirmed by the US Senate for five-year terms. The TVA board has nine positions and currently has six members, all of whom were confirmed on Dec. 21, 2022.
"It has fallen victim to paralysis by analysis, encumbering TVA's SMR project with studies and hurdles that will bog it down," the senators wrote.
They also criticized the board's effort to hire a replacement for Lyash — who announced in January plans to retire by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year — condemning what they described as an attempt to hire from within rather than "a top-quality leader from the outside." During his first term, President Donald Trump criticized Lyash's compensation and fired a TVA chairman and one of TVA's board members.
Blackburn and Hagerty said Trump should select an interim CEO to "clean up this mess and lay the groundwork for a new, long-term leader."
That interim CEO should immediately file an SMR construction application with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and seek funding from the US Energy Department for the project, the senators said. The TVA board has not yet voted to approve an SMR at the Clinch River site.
"TVA is aligned with the administration's energy dominance policy," TVA spokesperson Scott Fiedler told Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights. "Nuclear power and advanced nuclear will be the energy source that provides affordable, reliable and secure energy that is resilient and clean."
America's competitive advantage and its national security hinge on access to that energy, Fiedler said.
"We are not just developing an SMR, we are developing a technology, a supply chain, workforce and a delivery model that can build an industry to unleash American energy," Fiedler said.
To help fund the SMR project at Clinch River, the TVA led an application filed in January for $800 million of the grant funds alongside Duke Energy Corp., American Electric Power Co. Inc. and others to help fund the BWRX-300 project. The DOE has reissued that $900 million solicitation and Fiedler said the group will reapply.
If the group is awarded the funding, it could accelerate construction by two years, with commercial operation planned in 2033, Lyash said previously.
