Browns Ferry Begins Largest Turbine Upgrade Since Construction; Installs Innovative Fuel Assemblies In Reactor Monday, March 1, 2021
The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant Unit 2 started a scheduled refueling and maintenance outage this past weekend after generating more than 19 billion kilowatt-hours of carbon-free electricity in 654 days of reliable operation. This outage includes the largest scope of turbine deck work since original construction and innovations in fuel assembly components.
All three of the unit’s low-pressure turbines will undergo a comprehensive replacement of major components, including new rotors, inner casings, steam piping and bellows and turbine supervisory instruments. These tasks will require the support of more than 500 additional outage workers and an incredible amount of heavy lifting – with 600 separate crane lifts of components such as rotors weighing up to 327,888 pounds and inner casings weighing up to 200,000
Photo courtesy of Brooke Matson.
Brooke Matson is a Spokane-based poet and book artist whose latest collection, In Accelerated Silence
, explores the intersections of Big Science (think astrophysics) and Big Feeling (think grief and resilience). Both philosophical and grounded in the elements and the body, these poems read like missives from a starry night, when the body feels alive and the mind contemplative.
Hum by Jamaal May: Maybe because I read it on my first writing residency, May’s first full collection showcases his talent for word choice, rhythm, and creativity on the page. You can almost feel him pushing the boundaries of each poem in terms of structure, perspective, imagery, or all of them at once. The word choice is so spot-on that many of the poems take on a texture or resonant quality (as the title of the book implies). Needless to say, these poems inspired me to experiment during my residency and I still return to the poems often. Some have become downright impr