Some Almost Forgotten History
In the 1970s, TVA embarked upon an overly-ambitious nuclear power program, against the advice of numerous knowledgeable outside (i.e. non-TVA) forecasters of future energy requirements. TVA's nuclear initiative was the brainchild of Aubrey (Red) Wagner, its board chairman and a my-way-or-the-highway kind of guy if ever there was one.
Under the Wagner reign, teams of public relations operatives toured the valley, promoting nuclear power that, according to them, would be so inexpensive to produce that it would not even be necessary to meter household use; customers could simply use as much as they wanted and pay a set amount per household.
By the early 1980s it had become glaringly apparent that the energy demand projections of the outside ("academic") forecasters were correct and that it would be economic folly to proceed to build the 18 reactors in the flawed Wagner program. Thus the uncomfortable but necessary decision was made to "mothball" some reactors already under construction and to cancel others entirely. By that time, Wagner was no longer the emperor of TVA and saner heads had been appointed to the Board, including a new and very sharp chairman, S. David Freeman, former director of the Ford Foundation's energy project and a man willing to confront reality.
The Wagner nuclear debacle is largely responsible for TVA's multi-billion dollar indebtedness. It also is responsible for a considerable part of what you now pay your local TVA-served utility for your electricity use. The operational nuclear plants in the TVA power system are functioning reasonably well and without them the TVA service area would fall short of the electrical power it needs. It is those numerous mothballed and cancelled plants that have rung up the debt and one man is to blame for this folly--Aubrey (Red) Wagner.