In 1971, Dominion Virginia Power created a man-made lake, Lake Anna, to serve as water coolant for the power company’s two nuclear power generators situated on the shoreline. As part of the project, the company built a series of dikes and lagoons through which water from the power plant passed. The design allowed for a “cool” end of the lake — around 99 degrees.
Soon thereafter, the state established a state park, and landowners began selling lots for recreational development. Today, about 2,600 homes — some valued as high as $1 million — are scattered around the edge of the lake.
You can guess what’s coming, can’t you? Now some residents are concerned by Dominion’s plans to build a third generator. They’re worried what might happen to water levels, water temperatures and water quality in the lake, according to Calvin Trice, writing in the Times-Dispatch. Some residents fear that warmer water will lead to algae blooms and the appearance of Naegleria fowleri, also known as “brain-eating amoebae.”
Harry Ruth is head of the Friends of Lake Anna, which has joined with the Lake Anna Civic Association and the Lake Anna Boating and Recreation group to form a task force. His main objective, judging from the Times-Dispatch story, is to keep the water temperature at the public end of the lake under 100 degrees. Let’s recapitulate the pertinent facts:
Dominion built the lake to serve its nuclear power plant.
Dominion owns the lake.
Dominion was there first.
The power plant is highly visible — there is no way anyone could buy property on the lake and not know they were building within a few miles of a nuclear, friggin’ power plant.
When Dominion built the facility, it set aside land to accommodate a third nuclear generator. It was no secret that Dominion was keeping open the option of building it one day.
When people bought land on the lake, they paid less for their lots than they otherwise would because not everybody wants to live within a few miles of a nuclear, friggin’ power plant. When you build that close to a nuclear power plant, you assume a modicum of risk that something less than desirable might happen one day!
Dominion doesn’t need another PR controversy that makes it look like the bad guy, so it has altered the design for the prospective third reactor to incorporate a cooling tower that would use considerably less water than originally planned.
My question: How much does that new cooling tower cost? How many tens of millions of dollars will Dominion’s rate payers fork out over the next 30 years so lake residents don’t have to worry about algae blooms that have yet to be seen and brain-eating amoebae that state environmental officials have found no evidence of?
“I guess we would feel a whole lot better if the water were at least under a hundred degrees, but Dominion doesn’t appear to want do anything to help with that,” Harry Ruth told the Times-Dispatch.
Waaaah. I’d feel a whole lot better if I didn’t have to pay to maintain the lifestyle amenities of Ruth and his neighbors.
Update: Reader Larry Gross raises some interesting issues regarding the impact of Dominion’s third nuclear generator on water levels and water flows downstream from Lake Anna. Read the comments for his observations. The situation appears to be more complicated than I have portrayed it, basing my remarks as I did on the Times-Dispatch story alone.
(Photo credit: Skywash.net. Click on image for bigger picture.)
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