SPRING CITY, Tenn. — The Tennessee Valley Authority distributed calendars with safety and evacuation information to people who live within 10 miles of the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Spring City, Tenn.
TVA leaders said state and local emergency managers are vital to helping the community around the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant be safe in the event of an emergency.
"If you're going to come work here, you're making a promise to our neighbors that we're going to take care of you if something were to go wrong here," Mike White, the emergency preparedness manager at Watts Bar, said.
TVA took reporters to a simulator on Thursday and simulated an earthquake that cut power to the nuclear plant. Training coordinator Leon Neat said control room operators have to train for years before their allowed to work in the control room for the nuclear plant.
"It doesn't matter which operator is in there, it's going to be performed the exact same way," Neat said.
White said nuclear is one of the most reliable sources of energy in TVA's system. TVA said more than 40% of its power comes from nuclear plants across the region.
Last year, during Winter Storm Elliott, nuclear power never went offline, TVA said.
"We went to look at what happened in Fukushima and we made sure that we took lessons from that," White said.
After nuclear accidents overseas and in the U.S., White said people are skittish about the idea of nuclear plants in their neighborhood. In 2011, a tsunami hit the Fukushima Nuclear Plant in Japan, killing more than 2,000 people, the World Nuclear Organization said.
"What's different about our plants here in the United States is, all of our fuel tanks are buried underground," Neat said. "That's something that if they had done, they would have been fine."
TVA said federal regulators require large-scale tests of the emergency and evacuation systems every 2 years. The utility passed this year. TVA said it tests its systems more frequently.