Joseph Scott Jr., a senior trainer at the North Anna Power Station, talks about the training program in the control room simulator. View More Images from this story Visit the Photo Place

Dominion pitches reactor

Company invites media to North Anna Power Station to reinforce point that more nuclear power is needed for the future.

Date published: 9/20/2006

By RUSTY DENNEN

Across a sunken field and gravel road from the two enormous, bee-hive shaped reactor containment buildings at North Anna Power Station sits a little length of white pipe marked with a pink flag.

The spot is where Dominion power may someday build a third nuclear reactor at the plant near Mineral in Louisa County.

It was one stop on a "media day" tour yesterday for reporters, and a chance for Dominion to reinforce its arguments that another reactor could help the company deal with future electrical power needs.

David Christian, senior vice president-nuclear and chief nuclear officer, kicked off the tour with a short presentation in the plant's visitors center. He said Dominion must plan ahead, and that more nuclear power should be in the mix--not only for the nation, but to meet rising electricity demand worldwide.

Between 2002 and 2025, he said, U.S. energy consumption will increase by about a third. Since 1998, the fuel of choice for new power plants has been natural gas. But he noted that natural gas prices have fluctuated from between $4 per million cubic feet to $14, and oil prices have been volatile.

Between now and 2020, 50,000 megawatts of new nuclear power generation will be needed just to maintain existing energy supply diversity, he added.

In a speech to the World Affairs Council last week in Richmond, Thomas F. Farrell II, Dominion's chief executive officer, said the United States could be headed for an "energy train wreck" unless a balanced energy policy is created soon.

"Diversification is the linchpin. We must utilize all of our energy sources--coal, nuclear, oil, gas hydro and renewable sources--together with more conservation and energy efficiency. We do not have the luxury of limiting ourselves to a few sources of energy and excluding others."

That's why the plant, on the Louisa County shore across from Spotsylvania County, has been in the news as its application for a possible new reactor wends its way through the regulatory system. The 13,000-acre lake, formed in 1972 to cool the two existing reactors, is ringed by thousands of homes and is a popular destination for fishing and boating.

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Date published: 9/20/2006