Steel Market Update (SMU) communicated with US Steel, Nucor and Severstal on Friday of this week regarding their steel mill operations in Alabama and Mississippi to see if they were impacted by Wednesday’s storms which ravaged the South. The Severstal Columbus mill as well as Nucor Decatur and Tuscaloosa are currently not in operation due to lack of power. U.S. Steel Fairfield Works is back in operation after taking their equipment offline just prior to the storm hitting.

One of our sources at Nucor advised SMU there was minimal damage to their Decatur and Tuscaloosa facilities but they were still assessing the full impact of the storm. The major issue was a lack of power due to the interruption of supply from the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) which has a nuclear power plant down at the moment.

Severstal Columbus has suspended operations due to the lack of power. The Severstal spokesperson told SMU this morning: “Columbus had a power outage due to the latest tornado in the Southern US. We had backup generators which allowed us an orderly shutdown of the plant. We had no injuries or damage to the equipment. The mill management is currently working with TVA to resolve the outage as soon as possible.”

Several manufacturing companies received damage including Independence Tube which received major damage to their Decatur, Alabama tube mill.

We are aware of at least one service center as having been impacted by the storms. Steel Technologies plant in Decatur was damaged and was without power as of late this past week.

ThyssenKrupp Steel USA (TKS) was not affected by the power outages in the northern sections of Alabama. However, TKS mill was experiencing other issues which impacted production earlier this week. You can read more about the TKS challenges in our next Steel Market Update newsletter coming out Sunday evening.

The major problem for steel companies located in Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee was the lack of electricity. The TVA’s Browns Ferry nuclear power plant shut down when the electrical grid was disrupted not allowing electricity to freely flow in and out of the plant.

In a press release released by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) on Saturday, April 30th the company reported 29 transmission lines as having been returned to service out of the 90 which were originally knocked out of service. The TVA is anticipating restoration of service by early next week and SMU will check on the status of Nucor’s two plants – Decatur and Tuscaloosa – as well as Severstal Columbus which were shut down due to the interruption in their power supply. Our understanding from U.S. Steel is Fairfield is operating.

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