Possible VA Nuclear Facility Expansion Stirs Controversy

Friday, February 13, 2009

Jay Scarborough/Capital News Service

RICHMOND - Dominion Power wants to generate more electricity from nuclear power in Virginia. But the proposed expansion of a nuclear plant 60 miles northwest of Richmond has generated safety and environmental concerns among nearby residents.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a public hearing Feb. 3 on the proposed addition of a third reactor at the North Anna Nuclear Power Plant in Louisa County. Opponents were present to voice their objections.

"We are obviously opposed to a third reactor on Lake Anna," said Louis Zeller, science director for Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League. "We have our problems with the first two reactors. Adding a third reactor is a situation which puts extreme stress on the resources that is the lake."

Zeller said officials should consider another factor: The reactor's site is on a seismically active fault line.

"No one denies there is a fault there," Zeller said. The debate, he said, is whether the result could be an earthquake powerful enough to cause an accident within the facility.

Even without an earthquake or other accident, nuclear power stations give off radioactive emissions, Zeller said.

"There's no safe level of radiation," Zeller said. "This stuff can go for quite a long distance. If the wind is blowing strong it goes that much further downwind."

The Lake Anna Power Plant was built and is operated by Dominion Power. The facility was named after the North Anna River, which Dominion dammed to form the 9,600-acre Lake Anna reservoir. Water from the lake is used to cool the power station.

Opponents say the nuclear plant is raising the water temperature in the lake -- and that the proposed expansion will make the problem worse.

"Another (reactor) constructed on the shores of Lake Anna will only increase water temperature and decrease availability of water in the lake and downstream, especially in times of drought," said Elena Day of the People's Alliance for Clean Energy.

Dominion Power knows about the Lake Anna community's concerns and believes the North Anna facility already has addressed the water level and temperature issues.

"We have been working with the people who live on the lake," said Virginia Dominion Power spokesman Richard Zuercher. "They've had concerns for years. There were concerns about water level impacts and temperature impacts."

Zuercher said Dominion Power agreed to put a closed-loop cooling tower system in place to alleviate these concerns.

"The issues raised by some of the anti-nuke people about heating up the lake, that's not an issue anymore," Zuercher said. "We are not going to be putting any additional heated water into the lake by operation of the third unit."

A projected increase in demand for power is one of the main reasons for Dominion's desire to add on to the existing North Anna facilities. The proposed expansion would be a 1,520 megawatt nuclear unit, adding to the existing 1,786 megawatts from the two operational units which produce enough electricity to power 450,000 homes.

According to Zuercher, Dominion Power imports 30 percent of the electricity into Virginia to meet customer demand. This makes Virginia the second largest importer of electricity in the nation, behind California.

Leonard Smock, director of the Rice Center for Environmental Life Sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University, stated people often forget why Lake Anna exists.

"Lake Anna was built by the power company with the express purpose of using the reservoir to cool its generators in the production of power," stated Smock in an e-mail. "If it were not for that need and funding source, the reservoir would not exist."

Day said the overheated water in Lake Anna and its effects on the lake's ecosystem and recreation activities have not been addressed by the NRC's environmental impact statement.

Day said the NRC also has not resolved the issue of disposal and storage of high-level radioactive waste generated by the reactors.

"They are ignoring that storage in pools and casks at nuclear facilities increases the possibility of leakage, contamination and heightens security risks," Day said.

http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2009/02/13/chatham/news/news29.txt