Dive Brief:

• The Tennessee Valley Authority has completed the first nuclear backup facility in the United States at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Spring City, Tennessee. The NRC is pushing similar retrofits at reactors across the nation following the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility.
• The facility is an $80 million concrete bunker housing equipment such as pumps and generators. Anchored to the bedrock beneath the plant, it is designed to withstand earthquakes, fires, and even a missile attack.
• The facility has 18-inch concrete walls, and houses six pumps that can cool reactors by moving 5,000 gallons of water per minute.

Dive Insight:

When a 2011 tsunami struck Japan's Fukushima facility, it was an inability to pump water that led to the nuclear meltdown. Since then, regulators in the United States have been directing most nuclear facilities to install backup facilities that can withstand disasters while cooling the reactors.

TVA is the first to complete such a facility, and it is designed to withstand all manner of disruption. According to the Times Free Press, the walls will hold up to 360 mile-per-hour winds or an earthquake far greater than predicted for the region.

Times Free Press quoted Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who toured the building this week, saying "The next time a tornado comes through East Tennessee, this is the building you want to be in."

TVA has spent about $200 million on upgrades designed to avoid a Fukushima-type disaster.