The company ensnared in a years-long legal battle to buy an unfinished nuclear plant from the Tennessee Valley Authority showcased a new tactic Wednesday — tying the fight over the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant to President Joe Biden's plans to curtail climate change.
Nuclear Development, a private company owned by real estate developer Franklin Haney and his family, sent out a news release this week that tied the company's long-held plans to buy Bellefonte to the new push to decarbonize the nation's electric grid.
“There is a major mismatch between the strategy TVA’s previous leadership adopted and the new federal decarbonization targets. The public-private Bellefonte partnership we originally put forward — which is still on the table — is a real opportunity for TVA’s current leadership to fix that. That is why we are calling on TVA leadership and local and energy policymakers to take a fresh look at it,” Bill McCollum, Nuclear Development's CEO and a former TVA executive said in the news release.