Nuclear Power in Virginia

Surry nuclear power plant (through car windshield)

Nuclear reactors provide electrical power to Virginians. Reactors are also installed and refueled at the shipyard in Newport News to provide power for US Navy aircraft carriers and submarines.

Virginia has commercial nuclear power plants at two locations, with two reactors each in Louisa County (North Anna 1 and North Anna 2) and Surry County (Surry 1 and Surry 2). The plants are most efficient when running at a steady rate, so they are used for baseload rather than peaking power.

Baseload plants run 24 hours per day and supply the electricity needed even when demand is at its lowest level. Peaking plants are turned on and off during the day, and supply extra energy needed in the morning (when people wake up, get ready for work/school, and turn on lights/hairdryers etc.) or in the evening (when people come home and cook dinner, do laundry, etc.).

One-third of the electricity distributed by Dominion Resources is produced by these two plants, and it has plans to add new reactors at the North Anna site. The company recognizes the risks of using nuclear fuel, and the economics of the private utility are affected by its costs to manage those risks - including the day in the future when the nuclear power plants must be closed permanently (decommissioned). In its 2005 Annual Report, Dominion reported that it had set aside $2.6 billion to satisfy the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's minimum financial assurance amounts for the future decommissioning of its nuclear facilities, but this may not equal the total that actually could be required.1

There are inherent risks in the operation of nuclear facilities. Dominion operates nuclear facilities that are subject to inherent risks. These include the threat of terrorist attack and ability to dispose of spent nuclear fuel, the disposal of which is subject to complex federal and state regulatory constraints. These risks also include the cost of and Dominion’s ability to maintain adequate reserves for decommissioning, costs of plant maintenance and exposure to potential liabilities arising out of the operation of these facilities. Dominion maintains decommissioning trusts and external insurance coverage to manage the financial exposure to these risks. However, it is possible that costs arising from claims could exceed the amount of any insurance coverage.

Fear of nuclear power has severely limited its use in Virginia as a source for electricity, though the company has visitor centers at each plant and even an online tour of a nuclear power plant. Disaster plans have been developed for the reactors in Virginia (and for an incident at Calvert Cliffs in nearby Maryland) to evacuate people within 10 miles of North Anna Power Station (with a protected action zone for Caroline, Hanover, Louisa, Orange, and Spotsylvania counties) and Surry Power Station (with a protected action zone for Isle of Wight, James City, Surry, York counties and the cities of Newport News and Williamsburg). There are also plans to protect dairy products and crops within 50 miles.

The two nuclear reactors at the University of Virginia reactor in Charlottesville - the 100-watt "Cooperatively Assembled Virginia Low-Intensity Educational Reactor" (CAVALIER) and 2-megawatt University of Virginia Reator (UVAR) have been decommissioned (in 1988 and 1998).

The 10-megawatt nuclear reactor once operational at Fort Belvoir (the SM-1) is being decommissioned. The Army claims "was the first nuclear power reactor to provide electricity to a commercial power grid in the U.S.,"2 before it was deactivated in 1973. That power plant was an early model of what the Army expected to be many small nuclear power plants built for deployment to locations without electricity or conventional petroleum-based fuels, places that were not "on the grid" in an industrialized location.3

In November 1963, an Army study submitted to the Department of Defense (DOD) proposed employing a military compact reactor (MCR) as the power source for a nuclear-powered energy depot, which was being considered as a means of producing synthetic fuels in a combat zone for use in military vehicles. MCR studies, which had begun in 1955, grew out of the Transportation Corps' interest in using nuclear energy to power heavy, overland cargo haulers in remote areas. These studies investigated various reactor and vehicle concepts, including a small liquid-metal-cooled reactor, but ultimately the concept proved impractical.

The energy depot, however, was an attempt to solve the logistics problem of supplying fuel to military vehicles on the battlefield. While nuclear power could not supply energy directly to individual vehicles, the MCR could provide power to manufacture, under field conditions, a synthetic fuel as a substitute for conventional carbon-based fuels.

(In many Virginia communities, hospitals and dentist offices have radioactive isotopes, but these are generating radiation for X-rays and other medical purposes rather than power.)

Mining Uranium in Virginia

Nuclear Waste in Virginia

References

1. Dominion Resources, 2004 Annual Report, p.52 and p.87, www.dom.com/investors/annual2004/domannual.pdf (last checked February 24, 2006)
2. US Army Logistics Management College, "Corps has responsibility for three old atomic reactors," www.hq.usace.army.mil/cepa/pubs/apr01/story8.htm (last checked February 24, 2006)
3. US Army Logistics Management College, "Nuclear Power: An Option for the Army's Future," www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/SepOct01/MS684.htm (last checked February 24, 2006)

power lines headed south from Surry nuclear power plant

Energy
Rivers and Watersheds
Geography of Virginia