SODDY-DAISY, Tenn. – The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Sequoyah Nuclear Plant Unit 1 safely began a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage last Friday evening after generating more than 13.3 billion kilowatt-hours of carbon-free energy during its most recent, continuous 484-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 reliable, low-cost, carbon-free energy to the people and businesses we serve,” said Tom Marshall, TVA Sequoyah site vice president. “The team will load 81 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 Marshall.

More than 16,000 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 operational TVA nuclear reactors across 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 nearly 10 million people in the Tennessee Valley. Combined with other parts of TVA’s diverse generation system, nuclear power is the major contributor to TVA carbon-free energy, which currently accounts for more than half the energy supplied to customers today.

Moving forward, TVA will invest about $15 billion over the next three years on new generation, strategic transmission projects and the reliability of existing assets to help ensure our region’s energy security.