Nuclear Power in Virginia

Surry nuclear power plant (through car windshield)

Virginia has commercial nuclear power plants at two locations, with two reactors each in Louisa County (North Anna 1 and North Anna 2) and in 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. In contrast, 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.).

Between 1999-2009, 38% of the electricity generated in Virginia was produced by the four nuclear reactors at North Anna and Surry.¹ Dominion Resources has plans to add a new 1,700 megawatt reactor at the North Anna site. The third reactor, if built, would use a Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor design developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.²

Dominion Resources recognizes the risks of using nuclear fuel differ from other sources of power. The economics of the private company are affected by the costs to manage those risks, including the day in the future when the nuclear power plants must be closed permanently (decommissioned). In its 2004 Annual Report, the utility said 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:³

"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."

In 2010, however, the company reported:4

"The total estimated cost to decommission Virginia Power’s four nuclear units is $2.2 billion in 2010 dollars and is primarily based upon site-specific studies completed in 2009... Virginia Power expects to decommission the Surry and North Anna units during the period 2032 to 2067."

Dominion Resources has purchased liability insurance in case of an accident at North Anna or Surry. The maximum coverage offered by private insurance companies is not sufficient to cover potential costs, however. In addition to the $375 million in coverage for each site that Dominion has bought from private commercial insurance pools, the utility also relies upon a $12 billion pool of insurance funded by every utility using nuclear power. The Federal government created the insurance safety net when the Price-Anderson Act was first passed in 1957, to spur commercial use of atomic energy.

Still, fear of nuclear power after the Three Mile Island incident in 1979 limited the development of additional nuclear power plants in Virginia as a source for electricity. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 included new subsidies for nuclear power, and popular support for more commercial nuclear power plants appeared to be growing untilt the meltdowns at Fukushima, Japan in 2011 after a tsunami.

Nuclear power plants generate no greenhouse gases, but the facilities do generate fear of a disaster. To present the case that nuclear power is safe, Dominion has visitor centers at each plant and even an online tour of a nuclear power plant.⁵

Disaster plans have been developed for the four reactors in Virginia, plus the Calvert Cliffs plant 22 miles away in Maryland. The plans document how people within 10 miles of the reactors would be evacuated from the Plume Exposure Pathway (or Ten-Mile Emergency Planning Zone), based on the assumption that "For the worst core melt sequences, immediate life-threatening doses would generally not occur outside of the zone." The Ingestion Exposure Pathway (or 50-Mile Emergency Planning Zone) was defined based on the assumption that "Much of any particulate material in a radioactive plume would have been deposited on the ground within 50 miles of the facility."

10-Mile Plume Exposure Pathway Emergency Planning Zone and state road map, at North Anna Power station in Louisa County
Source: Dominion Resources North Anna 3 Combined License Application, Part 5: Emergency Plan

50-Mile Site Ingestion Exposure Pathway Emergency Planning Zone (10-mile zone marked in red)
Source: Dominion Resources North Anna 3 Combined License Application, Part 5: Emergency Plan

The Virginia Department of Emergency Services also plans for a release of radiation from nuclear-powered ships in Hampton Roads at the Naval Station Norfolk, the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, and the Newport News Shipyard). In case of an incident, an Area of Planning Attention extending 0.5-mile from the ship will be declared instead of the 10-mile and 50-mile zones, because the amount of radioactive material on the ships and consequences of an accident is lower.⁶

By comparison, a 12-mile zone was evacuated around the Fukushima plant in 2011, but some locations further away are "hot spots" with excessive radiation levels. After the meltdowns at Fukushima, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission recommended that all Americans evacuate from a zone within 50 miles of the crippled plants. Later, health inspectors discovered that food from areas far outside the evacuation zone (including ocean-caught fish) were contaminated with radioactive isotopes of cesium.⁷

Other Nuclear Reactors in Virginia

Two nuclear reactors were built for research and educating engineering students at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The 2-megawatt University of Virginia Reactor (UVAR) was in operation between 1960-1998, and the 100-watt "Cooperatively Assembled Virginia Low-Intensity Educational Reactor" (CAVALIER) ran from 1974-1988. In 2002, radioactive components at the facility were dismantled and shipped to Envirocare in Utah and to Barnwell, South Carolina for disposal.⁸

SM-1 nuclear power plant at Fort Belvoir
Source: Fort Belvoir

The Army Nuclear Power Program, based at Fort Belvoir, built and tested two small nuclear power plants at that site. It created the first nuclear power plant to generate electricity in Virginia, the 10-megawatt SM-1. The Army claims the SM-1 "was the first nuclear power reactor to provide electricity to a commercial power grid in the U.S.,"⁹ 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.¹⁰

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.

USS Sturgis with MH-1A nuclear power plant, operating in the Panama Canal Zone
Source: Panama Historical Society Facebook page

The Army also tested its last nuclear power plant in Virginia. The MH-1A reactor capable of producing as much as 45 megawatts was installed in a World War Two Liberty ship, renamed the USS Sturgis after the recently-deceased Chief of the US Army Corps of Engineers. The ship's propulsion system was removed, in order to make space for the rector. After a successful test of the reactor at Gunston Cove on the Potomac River, the floating power plant was towed to the Panama Canal, where it operated as a 10-megawatt power barge during the Vietnam War. The nuclear-generated electricity replaced output from a hydropower plant, allowing more water from Gatun Lake to be used for ship transits.¹¹

Both the SM-1 and MH-1A reactors have now been deactivated. The Army may wait as long as 50 years for radiation to decrease before complete decommissioning of the reactors.¹² The USS Sturgis has been placed in the Reserve Fleet in the James River before it is recycled.¹³

The Navy has continued its nuclear power program in Virginia, installing and refueling nuclear reactors in aircraft carriers and submarines at Newport News.

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

References

1. "Table 5 - Table 5. Electric Power Industry Generation by Primary Energy Source, 1990 Through 2009," Virginia Electricity Profile (2009 Edition), U.S. Energy Information Administration, http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/virginia.html (last checked December 27, 2011)
2. "Dominion selects APWR for North Anna," World Nuclear News< March 10, 2010, a href="http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Dominion_selects_APWR_for_North_Anna-1005104.html">http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Dominion_selects_APWR_for_North_Anna-1005104.html (last checked December 27, 2011)
3. 2004 Annual Report, Dominion Resources, p.52 and p.87, http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/11/110481/ar2004.pdf (last checked February 24, 2006)
4. "Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2010," Dominion Resources, p.11, http://www.dom.com/investors/pdf/2010_10k.pdf (last checked December 27, 2011)
5. Dominion Power, animated tour of a nuclear power station, http://www.dom.com/about/stations/nuclear/nuctour.html, "Nuclear Emergency Preparedness," http://www.dom.com/about/stations/nuclear/emergency-plans/index.jsp (last checked December 27, 2011)
6. "Commonwealth of Virginia Emergency Operations Plan - Radiological Emergency Response Plan Annex, Volume III," September 2010, pp.RERP 8-10, http://www.vaemergency.gov/sites/default/files/COVEOPVolumeIIIRadiologicalPLanSeptember2007version9_1_2010.pdf (last checked December 27, 2011)
7. "Plants Face New Worries - Spread of Radiation in Japan Fuels Questions About Evacuation Plans in U.S.," Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703362904576219031025249872.html; "Japanese Tests Find Radiation in Infant Food," New York Times, December 6, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/world/asia/cesium-found-in-japanese-baby-formula.html (last checked December 27, 2011)
8. P. F. Ervin, L. A. Lundberg, P. E. Benneche, Dr. R. U. Mulder, D. P. Steva, "University of Virginia Reactor Facility Decommissioning Results," Waste Management 2003 Symposium, February 2003, http://www.wmsym.org/archives/2003/pdfs/429.pdf (last checked December 27, 2011)
9. 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)
10. 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 December 27, 2011)
11. US Army Corps of Engineers, The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: A History, Publication Number EP 870-1-68, p. 155, http://140.194.76.129/publications/eng-pamphlets/ep870-1-68/c-3.pdf (last checked December 27, 2011)
12. Burns, Brenda, M., "Quo Vadis: Where Goes the Army Reactor Program?" in NBC Report, United States Army Nuclear and Chemical Agency, Fall-Winter 2004, pp.69-70, https://www.cbrniac.apgea.army.mil/.../NBC_Report_Fall_Winter04.pdf (last checked May 22, 2010)
13. Honerlah, Hans B. and Hearty, Brian P., "Characterization Of The Nuclear Barge Sturgis" from Proceedings of the Waste Management 2002 Conference, February 24-28, 2002, http://www.wmsym.org/archives/2002/Proceedings/44/168.pdf (last checked December 27, 2011)

power lines headed south from Surry nuclear power plant

Electricity in Virginia
Mining Uranium in Virginia
Nuclear Waste in Virginia
Virginia Places