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Joseph Scott Jr., a senior trainer at the North Anna Power Station, talks about the training program in the control room simulator.
If a third reactor is built at the North Anna Power Station in Mineral, it is tentatively planned for the area of the left corner, behind the current two reactors.
500,000-volt transmission lines (top) exit the turbine building. Lower lines supply power to the plant.
Piping runs under the deck of turbines in the system that produces power at the North Anna station. |
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.
Dominion is one of four U.S. utilities seeking permits for new reactors. Others in the running are in Illinois, Mississippi and Georgia.
Dominion applied in September 2003 for an early site permit, the first step in a lengthy review process. The permit allows the utility to resolve site, safety and environmental issues prior to making a decision to build and to "bank" a site for up to 20 years.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to make a decision on that permit by December 2007.
If that's approved, Dominion would then need a combined license to build and operate a third reactor.
The company says it has no plans now for a new reactor, but that it wants the option should market conditions and demand make it worthwhile.
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality is also involved in the permitting process. It will decide by early November whether Dominion's plan conforms to the state's coastal protection laws.
There is no shortage of opposition to Dominion's plan: Half a dozen environmental groups and citizens organizations have weighed in on the prospect of a North Anna Unit 3.
To date, environmental and safety impacts have been reviewed by the NRC. The agency is expected to issue a final environmental impact statement in December.
Critics have many concerns, among them, additional spent fuel stored on the site creating more of a target for terrorists, plant security, environmental impacts on the lake--mainly water levels, water temperatures and water use--and whether Dominion has sufficiently explored other alternative energy sources.
To reach RUSTY DENNEN:
Email: rdennen@freelancestar.com
