Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., recently visited a Tennessee Valley Authority site that has been designated as the location for a TVA small modular reactor. Lee and Fleischmann were accompanied on the tour by Jeffrey Lyash, CEO of TVA.
TVA in 2022 entered a two-party agreement with GE Hitachi to support TVA's planning and preliminary licensing for a potential deployment of a BWRX-300 small modular reactor at the Clinch River Nuclear site and provide additional information needed as TVA continues to analyze the viability of SMRs, subject to future TVA board approval.
At the site, Lee said that the location is “going to be the future of America’s energy production – or certainly a model for the way America produces clean, reliable, low-cost energy for Americans in the future.” He said that “Tennessee is very fortunate to have TVA as a leader in that field of development and production and generation of power.”
In a March 11 tweet, Fleischmann said that East Tennessee “is already a leader in nuclear power, and we will lead the next generation of small modular reactors.”
In his recent State of the State speech, Lee proposed $50 million in a Nuclear Fast Track fund “to recruit companies to our state that will specifically establish a nuclear development and manufacturing ecosystem built for the future of Tennessee.”
