The Nation - News from April 27, 1989

The Tennessee Valley Authority said 3,000 jobs in the agency’s nuclear power division will be eliminated within 18 months. TVA Chairman Marvin Runyon, who already has laid off 7,000 of the 35,000 employed by the agency when he took office in January, 1988, said in Chattanooga that further cuts are needed to keep power rates stable and competitive with private utilities. The TVA started the nation’s most ambitious nuclear power program, with 17 reactors, in the 1960s, but falling power sales and cost overruns forced cancellation of eight of the reactors and left the the agency $17 billion in debt.