Kernkraftwerk Browns Ferry

The Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant is located on the Tennessee River near Decatur and Athens, Alabama, on the north side (right bank) of Wheeler Lake. The nuclear power plant is named after a ferry that operated at the site until the middle of the 20th century. The site has three General Electric boiling water reactor (BWR) nuclear generating units and is owned entirely by the Tennessee Valley Authority. Browns Ferry was TVA's first nuclear power plant; its approval occurred on June 17, 1966 and construction began in September 1966. In 1974, the time of its initial operation, it was the largest nuclear plant in the world. It was the first nuclear plant in the world to generate more than 1 gigawatt of power.In 2006, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) renewed the licenses for all three reactors, extending them for an additional twenty years.Surrounding populationThe NRC defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of, concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, and an ingestion pathway zone of about, concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity.The 2010 U.S. population within of Browns Ferry was 39,930, an increase of 12.3 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 977,942, an increase of 11.0 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Huntsville (28 miles to city center).