The United States’ newest nuclear power plant has taken 43 years to build

QUARTS — This summer, if all goes according to plan, the second reactor at Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant will begin supplying power to the US electrical grid. Construction on the reactor in Spring City, Tennessee, has proceeded in fits and starts since the project began in 1973. It will be the first new nuclear reactor to come online in the US since the first Watts Bar reactor was completed 20 years ago.

Nuclear technology is also changing, with expanding global supply chains making the construction of new reactors look more like that of cars and other manufactured goods. The first prototypes of a new generation of smaller, cheaper, and more efficient reactors are just beginning to come online. Watts Bar has been especially criticized for relying on 1970’s technology similar to that of the Fukushima reactors.