SPRING CITY, Tenn. – The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar Nuclear Plant Unit 1 safely began a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage late last Friday evening after generating more than 14.3 billion kilowatt-hours of carbon-free energy during 539 days of operation.

“Refueling and maintenance outages deliver great results for the people of the Tennessee Valley,” explained Chris Reneau, TVA Watts Bar Site Vice President. “It’s during this time when our team members here at Watts Bar will make numerous improvements to the systems and components of the unit that can only be made when the unit is taken offline. Through these upgrades, we ensure that Unit 1 continues to deliver the safe and reliable carbon-free energy for the 10 million people across the Valley who are served by and rely on TVA for their electricity needs.”

More than 13,000 work activities are planned, including the loading of 92 new nuclear fuel assemblies, performing inspections of reactor components and steam generators, maintenance of plant equipment, and installing unit enhancements.

Watts Bar Unit 1 is one of seven operational TVA nuclear reactors. TVA’s nuclear fleet is the third largest in the nation, safely and reliably providing more than 40% of all electricity TVA generates. Combined with other parts of TVA’s diverse generation system, nuclear power is the major contributor as the agency works to be net-zero by 2050.