Dominion Receives High Marks for Safety - Applies for New Nuclear Unit License

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). The Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRC) has announced that, in all safety measures, Dominion's (NYSE:D) (Richmond, Virginia) 1,900-megawatt (MW) North Anna Nuclear Station was "in the green," meaning that the station passed an intense series of inspections. NRC has two inspectors assigned to North Anna, who performed about 3,500 hours of inspections in 2004. Due to the performance at North Anna, the NRC will require a normal level of inspection in 2005, except for some specialized areas, such as for the fuel storage. The improved safety record at North Anna can do nothing but improve the chances of siting a new nuclear unit at North Anna.

Dominion is leading a consortium that is receiving United States Department of Energy (DOE) funds to apply for the combined construction and operation license (COL) by 2010 for a new nuclear unit. The other members of the consortium are Bechtel Group Incorporated (San Francisco, California), and General Electric (NYSE:GE ) (Fairfield, Connecticut). The consortium is evaluating GE's Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) technology for the new unit. General Electric replaced original consortium members Hitachi and Atomic Energy of Canada in the consortium, which promote the more expensive CANDU technology.

The new unit at North Anna is planned to be 900 MW to1,000 MW in size, and if there are no holdups, construction could start before 2010 and be completed and operational by 2014-2015. North Anna has a large enough site for expansion, and if Dominion can maintain its level of safety or improve it, it could help in the review to install an additional unit.

Dominion (Richmond, Virginia) and its subsidiaries operate over 24,000 MW of generation capacity, of which about 24% is nuclear. They have three nuclear power plants totalling 5,760 MW: the 2,160 MW Millstone plant (Waterford, Connecticut), the 1,700 MW Surry plant (Surry, Virginia), and the 1,900 MW North Anna (Mineral, Virginia) plant. Each plant has two units. Dominion is working on the acquisition of a fourth plant, the single-unit 560 MW Kewaunee plant (Kewaunee, Wisconsin), which has one 560 MW unit that will bring Dominion's nuclear capacity to about 25.7% of total capacity.

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