TVA Eyes South Korea Nuclear Money for Tennessee Reactors

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The Tennessee Valley Authority is in discussions with the Trump administration over how a $120 billion South Korean pledge for American nuclear power will be spent, and Tennessee is on the short list of states that could land one of the new reactors.

TVA chief executive Mike Skaggs said the federal utility, which sells power across seven states, is part of the talks. The money comes from a framework the U.S. Commerce Department announced in late September, branded Project Power, which calls for eight gigawatt-scale reactors on federal sites. Six would use the Westinghouse AP1000 design and two would be the Korean APR1400.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has listed Tennessee with Kentucky, Ohio and South Carolina as possible locations. A U.S. Department of Energy official has said the sites will be chosen before the end of 2026. Every county in Tennessee gets its electricity through TVA, so a reactor placed anywhere in the state would feed the same grid that serves homes and factories from Memphis to Bristol.

Under the framework, $100 billion is set aside for construction and $20 billion for contingencies, and the two governments agreed to move a $10 billion advance by year end to buy long-lead equipment. Brookfield, a part owner of Westinghouse, has said the AP1000 units would be built as pairs on three federal sites. The Korean state power company KEPCO and its nuclear subsidiary KHNP also signed on.

For TVA the money matters because the utility does not receive appropriations from Congress and pays its way through power sales. Federal law limits its borrowing to $30 billion, and Skaggs has said that cap keeps TVA from financing large new plants on its own even as demand climbs. TVA has put the price of a single reactor near $5.4 billion, not counting interest or tax credits, and the utility says it has trimmed close to $1 billion from operating and maintenance spending.

This would be the second foreign trade arrangement this year to back TVA nuclear plans. A separate deal with Japan could provide up to $40 billion toward the utility’s buildout. The administration wants U.S. nuclear capacity to grow fourfold by 2050.

Filed under: Memphis TN Business News