The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced the issuance of a 40-year operating license 43 years after the Tennessee Valley Authority first made application for the federal license in January 1973. The Westinghouse Pressurized Water Reactor and Ice Condenser Containment is another 1960’s vintage technology originally conceptualized but abandoned as floating nuclear power plants in the coastal waters off New Jersey and the Gulf of Mexico. The concept required such a thin concrete containment structure to reduce weight on the floating platform that the controversial system was nicknamed “the eggshell containment.” Watts Bar 2 becomes the 10th PWR to operate on land with the controversial ice condenser design licensed to operate in the United States; Catawba 1 & 2 (NC), Cook 1 & 2 (MI), McGuire 1 & 2 (NC), Sequoyah 1 & 2 (TN) and Watts Bar 1 (TN).
The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy authors Sarah Barzack and Don Safer have illuminated the Watts Bar 2 licensing fiasco in a revealing issue of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.