"Nuclear renaissance ebbs at largest public utility"

As reported by Blake Farmer at Marketplace, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the largest public electric utility in the country, has canceled most of its "Nuclear Relapse" plans. Although the decades-under-construction Watts Bar Unit 2 in Tennessee is limping towards full power operations, other "zombie nukes" have been mothballed yet again, due to lack of demand for electricity.

The head of TVA cited ratepayer efficiency and conservation upgrades, such as switching from incandescent to compact fluorescent light bulbs (of course, LEDs are even more efficient!). A Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman cited the boom in fracked natural gas (although clean, safe, and ever more cost-competitive renewables like wind power and solar photovoltaics are also outcompeting nuclear power). And Don Safer of Nashville, a leader of the grassroots Sierra Club Nuclear-Free Campaign, vowed vigilance against any future efforts by the nuclear power industry to expand.

During his tenure as head of TVA under the Carter administration, Dave Freeman, now a senior advisor to Friends of the Earth, ordered the cancellation of several proposed atomic reactors.