ALABAMA – Another day of reckoning for the long-beleaguered nuclear plant in northeast Alabama is at hand.
The lawsuit brought by the company seeking to purchase the unfinished plant, which collapsed hours before the deal’s closing date, will go to trial in U.S. District Court in Huntsville on Sunday.
Nuclear Development LLC, a company formed by Tennessee developer Franklin Haney for the purpose of purchasing Bellefonte Nuclear Plant near Scottsboro, filed a breach of contract lawsuit in 2018 against Tennessee Valley Authority – which owns the plant.
The case will be heard and decided by U.S. District Judge Liles Burke. There will be no jury.
At issue is whether TVA had the legal authority to sell the plant to Nuclear Development by the closing deadline in November 2018. TVA has argued it did not have the right to complete the sale because ND had not completed the process of acquiring the appropriate permits from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to take possession of the plant.
ND has argued that issue should not have scuttled the sale.
What’s at stake could be the future of the plant – which has long promised economic prosperity to rural Jackson County but never delivered.
TVA began construction on the plant in 1974 but never completed it. The federal utility eventually declared it surplus property and put it up for auction in 2016. Nuclear Development submitted the winning bid at $111 million.
The company hired former TVA executives, including former CEO Bill McCollum, to shepherd bringing the plant online. Nuclear Development has promised to invest billions into completing the plant, which in return will surge the economy in the region to unseen heights.
At a Nuclear Development promotional event at the plant four months before the purchase closing date, U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks – whose district includes the plant – said the plant, once completed, would create 1,040 jobs with an average annual salary of $136,000 as well as another 3,100 indirect jobs with an annual salary of about $52,000.
An added plot of intrigue in the stalemate between TVA and ND is the upstart company’s courting of Memphis Light, Gas & Water as a potential customer for electricity generated at Bellefonte. Memphis is TVA’s largest customer.
“We had every right to solicit customers of TVA,” said Caine O’Rear III, one of ND’s attorneys, during a court hearing in February.
TVA has said that ND’s recruitment of Memphis was not a cause for declining to close on the sale.
Nuclear Development has paid TVA $22 million so far toward the $111 million auction price of the plant and another $7.1 million for plant maintenance, according to the lawsuit.
