Three years after the Tennessee Valley Authority started having contractors pull out steel tubes and pipes from America’s costliest unfinished power plant to sell as scrap, the utility is trying to decide if the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant is more than a pricey salvage yard. After 35 years and a USD 4.2 billion investment in a plant that has been mothballed, canceled and then revived, TVA might now try to finish it and have it operating by around 2020. The plant is located near Hollywood, Alabama, US. The federal utility halted construction of Bellefonte in the 1980s when the growth in power demand slowed and the cost of building nuclear plants rose. TVA maintained Bellefonte in an idle status for nearly two decades before finally deciding in 2006 it was too expensive and risky to finish. Now TVA’s thinking has changed, since the projected cost to build a new plant has almost doubled. In February, TVA convinced federal regulators to reinstate the construction permit for the original Bellefonte plant even though some of the plant equipment is gone.