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Wednesday’s storms took out all of TVA’s electric power transmission lines in Mississippi and North Alabama, and forced Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant unto diesel backup power and into emergency and automatic cold shutdown. Bill McCollum, the chief operating officer of Tennessee Valley Authority, said it may be weeks before power can be restored to all of the 300,000 customers whose power is supplied by the federal utility. “With the level of damage we have, it will be — we hope it will be days until we get most of the customers back on, but it will be weeks before we’ve...

ATHENS, Ala. -- The Tennessee Valley Authority shut down one of three units at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant on Thursday because water drawn from a river to cool the reactor was too hot, a spokesman said. The nation's largest public utility shut down Unit 2 about 5:42 p.m. CDT because water drawn from the Tennessee River was exceeding a 90-degree average over 24 hours, amid a blistering heat wave across the Southeast. "We don't believe we've ever shut down a nuclear unit because of river temperature," said John Moulton, spokesman for the Knoxville, Tenn.-based utility. __ TVA: http://www.tva.gov

Operators at the newly restarted Unit 1 at Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant manually shut down the reactor this morning following a leak in the electro-hydraulic control system. While attempting to repair the leak, piping separated and dumped about 600 gallons of fluid onto the turbine building floor, according to an incident report from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The report said cleanup of the fluid is in progress and the site is being monitored to contain the spill.

Operators at TVA's Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant restarted the Unit 1 reactor early today after a 22-year shutdown. The completion of the five-year, $1.8 billion restoration marks the country's first increase in nuclear generating capacity since TVA's Watts Bar Nuclear Plant came online in 1996. According to TVA, operators began the process of restarting the reactor on Monday and achieved a self-sustaining nuclear reaction at 12:28 a.m. today. Operators will conduct tests on the reactor and other plant systems during the next few weeks before reconnecting the unit to TVA's power grid. When at full power, the reactor will add...