A decision is near on an early site permit at North Anna that would allow Dominion Virginia Power to build two new nuclear reactors 30 miles east of Charlottesville. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board held evidentiary hearings late last month to look at environmental impacts on the Louisa County site.
 Do you love the smell of radiation in the morning? You’re in luck. Thanks to early regulatory approvals, two new nuclear reactors are likely coming to your backyard at Dominion Virginia Power’s Lake Anna site. |
Environmental groups aired concerns at a public comment session in February. Among their worries: New reactors will create more nuclear waste, require more security and have negative environmental impacts on Lake Anna, where two reactors are already sited. Michele Boyd, legislative director with Washington, D.C. nonprofit Public Citizen’s energy program, says the site approval is a done deal. “They will give them the early site permit…that’s pretty much guaranteed.”
The hearings were held before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB), the independent judicial arm of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. NRC staff issued a preliminary recommendation that the permit be approved.
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Dominion filed for the early site permit in September 2003. If approved, the Richmond-based power giant would have 20 or more years to build on the site.
The site’s two existing reactors currently generate 1,840 megawatts of electricity and satisfy about 17 percent of Virginia’s total energy demands. Dominion isn’t the only one looking to generate more nuclear power. The federal government—through a marketing blitz called the Clean and Safe Energy Commission—has recently turned toward nuclear initiatives as an alternative to fossil fuels, a response to growing global warming concerns that garners skepticism from the green community.
Louisa residents haven’t been so cautious. Though lakefront property owners are concerned that the lake doesn’t have enough water to handle the new reactors and are haggling over designs, the county of 27,000 is generally supportive. As reported by C-VILLE last May, Dominion employs about 1,000 at the North Anna facility; in 2005 it paid the Louisa government nearly $11 million in real estate and personal property taxes.
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