Thirty Years of Reliability

Watts Bar Unit 1 Celebrates 30 Years

When the late Jeanette Long spoke into the public address system at Watts Bar Nuclear Plant, the longtime administrative assistant to site executives was so proud. With good reason.

On that day, May 27, 1996, Jeanette moved close to the microphone and spoke, her voice resonating through the plant as she announced that Unit 1 had just started commercial operations. It was an announcement nearly 23 years in the making.

Larry Calahan remembers the moment he heard Jeanette’s voice through the speakers.

“I mean just to hear that, we were all really proud of what had gone on and how much we had all contributed to the effort,” said Calahan, who joined the Watts Bar construction team in 1975 and later worked as an Operations shift technical advisor during the startup of Unit 1. “It was such a feeling of satisfaction and great pride.”

A group of six dedicated Watts Bar employees, with a combined total of 241 years of service to TVA and Watts Bar, gathered recently in a conference room at the nuclear plant to reminisce about Unit 1 construction and readiness, its eventual startup and the unit’s 30th anniversary of commercial operations.

Ernie Murphy wasn’t there when construction began in July 1973, but he showed up at the Watts Bar construction site in March 1974, at age 20, for his first day of work as a time checker. He still remembers the massive amount of Watts Bar plant design changes that took place for safety purposes after the accident at Three Mile Island nuclear plant in 1979. Murphy was a planning supervisor in maintenance when Watts Bar Unit 1 went online.

“There was a lot of starting and stopping, and people came and went,” Murphy recalled. “Many of them came back again. But when we finally did start up the unit, it was pretty intense, especially in some of the management meetings.”

Billy Horton came to Watts Bar in 1985 for the Student Generating Plant Operator (SGPO) training program. He was an assistant unit operator (AUO), as ready as anyone when Unit 1 began commercial operations.

“Once things started happening, everyone was so excited about doing their jobs,” Horton said.

In addition to the Three Mile Island accident, a shift in the region’s power demand led to delays. The mid-1980s brought slower regional electricity growth as well as rising costs. Completion of the Watts Bar project became a lower priority.

But progress was still being made when Pete Williams finished the year-and-a-half AUO class at Browns Ferry and joined the Watts Bar team in 1993.

“By the time I got here, it was lots of work.” Williams said. “Lots and lots of hours. But it was always rewarding and exciting, especially as a new AUO. I learned so much, and we were always energetic because we could see that there was a goal and that we were working towards it.”

Phil Harris also joined TVA in 1993, first as a communications manager for the Generating Group. At Unit 1 startup, he spent a good amount of time at Watts Bar while working with the corporate communications team. He was truly living his dream.

“Growing up in Spring City, I remember learning about TVA in school,” Harris said. “I always wanted to go to work for TVA. And Watts Bar was the closest TVA location to my home.”

For Joyce Artis, the experience was similar. She remembered learning about TVA in school and imagining it would be a great place to work. She started at Watts Bar in 1994 as an Operations specialist, the role she held when Unit 1 went online. She said it didn’t take long to feel TVA pride and understand the importance of her role in the community.

“I hadn’t even been here for a month, but one day I was picking up my kids from daycare wearing my TVA shirt,” she said. A man there saw her shirt and asked about careers at TVA. “It was definitely known that if you got in with TVA, you had really done something.”

And on that day 30 years ago at Watts Bar, Artis and her teammates had indeed done something. They added 1,150 megawatts of power to the grid for the people of the Valley region. Watts Bar Unit 1 became the last nuclear reactor to come online in the 20th century.

For many, it was more than just a work accomplishment.

“It’s not like you’re just coming to work to do eight hours and then going home,” Williams explained. “These are family commitments. We’re a large family here. And your family at home makes an incredible sacrifice for you to be here working to support the plant.

“Along with the long hours, there’s an incredible sense of pride working here. You want it to be successful and you want to do all that you can to enable that success.”

That camaraderie can make it tough to walk away, Artis said.

“I’m retiring, leaving at the end of the year,” she said. “And I’ll tell you – this will be one of the hardest things that I’ve ever done.”

Four of the six longtime Watts Bar employees who recently gathered in that conference room to talk about Unit 1’s 30 years of service have already retired. They are all back at the plant working as retirees.

“They call it breaking orbit,” Horton said. “It’s hard to break orbit from here because it’s such an all-inclusive part of your life. It’s family. It’s family in here and it’s family when we’re away. I worked a ton, and a ton of overtime, because I wanted to be here.”

“It’s rewarding that I get to come back here to help people who need it,” Calahan said. “I refer to people like me and Billy as force multipliers. We can spend an hour or two helping someone, and that knowledge transfer could save countless hours of craft time in the future. This is a great opportunity for us to help others and continue to serve the Valley.”