by James A. Bacon
Dominion has shut down both nuclear power units at its Surry County station to repair water leaks. The first one was taken offline over the weekend, the second was deactivated Monday. Reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
The leaks amounted to about 1,000 gallons, all of which was captured and processed for reuse once the reactors are running, [spokesman Rick] Zuercher said. Each reactor’s coolant system operates with about 71,000 gallons of water.
“These happen occasionally. They’re not significant,” Zuercher said. “There are levels of leakage that require us to shut down, but these did not rise to that level. We always try to capture problems when they’re small and fix them so they don’t become big problems.”
The incident follows a leaking pump in January that reduced the Unit 2 reactor to 60 percent capacity during repairs, and a shutdown this spring to refuel the two units. When Dominion shuts down its nuclear units, it has to make up the difference from other sources, either within its own fleet of power plants or by purchasing power from other companies over the PJM Interconnection grid. That energy can be expensive during the peak demand period of the summer.
Every time a nuclear plant shuts down for repairs, it seems to make the news. I suppose it’s the old Three Mile Island syndrome. Stuff that happens at a nuclear power plant is way scarier than the stuff that happens in any other kind of power plant. Other kinds of power plants shut down for maintenance and repairs, too — we just don’t hear about it.
The reality of the situation is that nuclear power plants spend more time online, operating 24/7, than any other type of electricity-generating plant. Based on 2013 data, the Nuclear Energy Institute asserts that nukes operate 90.9% of the time. That handily beats coal- and gas-fired plants and it clobbers wind and solar (although biomass plants experience relatively little downtime). That’s why Dominion Virginia Power can seriously talk about building a third nuclear generator at its North Anna facility despite a mind-numbing price tag measured in the billions of dollars. Not only do nukes generate power two to three times more of the time than alternatives, they tend to be longer-lived — 40 years routinely, and potentially as long as 60 years.
In its 2015 Integrated Resources Plan, Dominion expressed its intention to inform the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of its intent to “potentially submit” a license application to extend the Surry Power Station Units 1 and 2 for another 20 years. Built in 1972 and 1973, those units are already 40 years old. I presume that the initial construction cost of the two units has been fully written off. Assuming they can be operated safely, extending their life another 20 years would provide incredibly inexpensive power for Virginia.
Old versus new. That’s not necessarily to say that nuclear is the best option for new plants. Nuclear has hard-to-quantify risks not shared by other power sources. The fact that the North Anna station is built on a fault line does not inspire confidence. Neither does the fact that United States has yet to devise a permanent solution for the disposal of radioactive waste. The engineering and physics of nuclear power are so complex that anyone (from power companies to environmentalists to neighborhood kooks) can make any claim and members of the public have no ability to appraise them. That inherent uncertainty weighs heavily against nukes in the popular mind.
Not long ago, Dominion appeared ready, willing and able to start pushing for a third, 1,453-megawatt nuclear unit at North Anna, a proposal that would be sure to ignite massive controversy. For now, having spent hundreds of millions of dollars in preliminary work, the company is keeping that option alive. But the 2015 IRP seems less settled upon nuclear than before. The company’s own portfolio risk assessment showed that, on a risk-adjusted basis, new nuclear was marginally more expensive than alternatives that rely more upon gas or solar.
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