[4][5] In 2007, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Board approved completion of Unit 2 on August 1, and construction resumed on October 15.

[9] In February 2012, TVA said the design modifications to Watts Bar 2 were partially responsible for the project running over budget and behind schedule.

[11] TVA declared construction substantially complete in August 2015 and requested that NRC staff proceed with the final licensing review; on October 22, the NRC approved a 40-year operating license for Unit 2, marking the formal end of construction and allowing for the installation of nuclear fuel and subsequent testing.

[12] On December 15, 2015, TVA announced that the reactor was fully loaded with fuel and ready for criticality and power ascension tests.

In March 2016, the NRC described the project as a "chilled work environment," where employees are reluctant to raise safety concerns for fear of retribution.

The condenser, which was installed during the original construction phase of the plant in the 1970s, suffered a structural failure in one of its sections.

[3] The NRC operating license for Watts Bar was modified in September 2002 to allow irradiation of tritium-producing burnable absorber rods at Watts Bar to produce tritium for the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Nuclear Security Administration in order to maintain the viability of America's nuclear weapons.

DOE successfully shipped them to its tritium extraction facility at Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

[18] The 2010 U.S. population within 10 miles (16 km) of Watts Bar was 18,452, an increase of 4.1 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com.

The TVA reported that their facilities are designed to withstand seismic events and were not impacted by the earthquake, but personnel would conduct further inspections as a precaution.