There are some interesting tidbits buried in Greg Edwards’ story in the Times-Dispatch today about a Washington, D.C., conference on nuclear power. One of the panelists was Eugene Grecheck, Dominion’s Vice President for nuclear development.
- Dominion would never have proposed building a highly controversial coal-burning plant in Wise County purely on the technical merits of the location. As Edwards paraphrases him, the decisive factor was “General Assembly support for the plant and incentives state lawmakers had offered a company willing to build a plant in the state’s coal fields.” Bacon’s Bottom Line: It’s all about the pork, baby!
- Among all the electric utilities applying to build new nuclear power plants in the United States, Dominion Virginia Power is likely to be the very first to get the go-ahead. Grecheck based that appraisal on a permitting schedule posted on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s website. BBL: Has anyone calculated how economically competitive the nuclear plant would be without federal subsidies?
- Other than the Wise County plant, another coal plant is not an option for Dominion Virginia Power “because of the economics of building a coal facility and the permitting difficulties.” BBL: Translation: The environmentalist foes of the Wise County project have done their job well. Who wants to lay odds that their next target is the nuclear plant?
Final question: Is it even possible to build energy sources in this country any more without economic signals distorted by subsidies, incentives or obstructionists? Do we even know which the most economical energy sources are?