KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Tennessee Valley Authority board members have voted unanimously to finish construction of a 37-year-old nuclear plant in northeast Alabama.
The vote came during a Thursday meeting at TVA headquarters in Knoxville after board members heard public comments on the issue.
With about 200 people attending, some had to watch the meeting on a video feed in a separate room.
TVA President and CEO Tom Kilgore has said that building the Bellefonte reactor is the right move for the environment and for the utility's 9 million rate payers in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Mississippi.
Finishing the mothballed plant is projected to cost $4 billion to $5 billion, on top of about $4 billion already spent.
Construction is expected to begin sometime in 2013.
TVA board members listened Thursday to speakers on both sides.
Opponent Anna Haislip asked them to protect her grandchildren and heard supporter Fort Payne, Alabama, Chamber of Commerce President Brian Baine talk about creating jobs.
Haislip, of Nashville, told the nine board members "you can say clean and safe and clean and safe and clean and safe and it's never going to be the truth."
Baine said the Bellefonte reactor project, expected to create about 2,800 construction jobs when started and another 650 permanent jobs when completed at the end of the decade, is needed in his county that has 13 percent unemployment.
Bellefonte opponents have invited their supporters to attend and speak with "one loud voice." They also plan a vigil afterward, if Bellefonte is approved.
A month after zombie-costumed protesters paraded in Chattanooga to oppose TVA's plans to revive the plant, the nation's largest public utility has a new ban on costumes at its board meeting.
A TVA spokesman says the no-costume rule was intended to avoid any "disruption" at the meeting.
An opponent of TVA's plan to restart the nuclear plant construction that was stopped in the 1980s said she and others want to see the project at least delayed.
Sandy Kurtz and other members of the Bellefonte Efficiency and Sustainability Team group believed promoting conservation and renewable energy sources were better alternatives.
(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
