After operating at full power for more than three weeks and producing more than 500 million kilowatt hours of electricity, Watts Bar Unit 2 has been declared to be in full commercial operation. It will now become part of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) rate base.
TVA’s press office took a little creative license by announcing that the project had been completed within a $4.7 billion dollar approved budget. That statement is true if referencing the most recently approved revision to an original project cost estimate that began at $2.5 billion in 2007. That was when the TVA board made the final investment decision to complete the project that had begun in 1974.
Watts Bar Unit 2 will probably be the last nuclear plant completed whose construction began during the first Atomic Age in the US. The only other partially constructed projects with some hope of being completed – the two units at TVA’s Bellefonte site – are being auctioned off for pennies on the invested dollar and will most likely be used for other purposes.
— source forbes.com