Bull Run Fossil Plant, commonly known as Bull Run Steam Plant, is a retired 889 megawatt (MW), coal-fired electric generating station owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The plant is the only coal fired power plant ever constructed by TVA with one unit, and was retired on December 1, 2023.

Location

Bull Run Plant is located on 750 acre, in the Claxton community of Anderson County, Tennessee, on the north bank of Bull Run Creek, directly across the Clinch River (Melton Hill Lake) from Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

History

Construction began on April 2, 1962 and was completed on June 12, 1967, when the plant began commercial operation. In August 2018, TVA began studying whether to retire Bull Run. On February 14, 2019, the TVA board of directors voted 5-2 to close Bull Run by December 2023, as well as the remaining coal unit at Paradise in Kentucky by December 2020. High operational costs and low capacity factor were its factors in their decision. The plant was officially shut down on December 1, 2023. Operations to decommission the former plant were started shortly after the shut down.

Units and operating parameters

The plant was the only single-generator coal-fired plant in the TVA system. The plant's winter net generating capacity was about 889 MWe. The plant consumed 7300 short ton of coal per day, and required 2900 t of cooling water per hour. Its supercritical boiler operated at a pressure of 3650 psi and temperature of 1000 F. When the generator first went into operation, it was the largest in the world measured in terms of the volume of steam produced.

Environmental impact

In 2006, the plant ranked the 70th among the large coal-fired plants in the United States on the list of worst SO2 polluters, having emitted 11.92 lb of sulfur dioxide per MWh of energy produced (27,987 tons of SO2 in 2006 altogether). Since then, a wet limestone scrubber has been installed, which reduced sulfur dioxide emissions by about 95%. In 2015, the plant released 2,510,476 tons of.