Dominion applies for new Virginia reactor
In late November, Dominion became the third power company to formally propose building what would be the first new U.S. nuclear unit in more than 30 years when it filed an application for a combined construction and operating license (COL) license with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The reactor would be constructed on the grounds of Dominion’s North Anna nuclear plant (Figure 1) in Louisa County, Va. North Anna is already home to two reactors with a combined capacity of 1,834 MW.
If the approval process goes smoothly, Dominion could break ground by 2010 and have the new unit on-line by 2015. It would be based on the 1,520-MW GE-Hitachi Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) design. With the filing, Dominion becomes the first U.S. investor-owned, regulated utility to submit a full COL application.
Exelon Nuclear earlier announced plans to use the ESBWR for a plant it is considering building in Texas. The company is studying locations in Matagorda and Victoria Counties as potential sites.
Like most utilities considering building new nuclear capacity, Dominion has spread the financial risk of the North Anna project across several partners. Dominion will pay only about $60 million of the $500 million needed to reach the construction phase in Virginia. The balance will be paid by project partners, which include GE-Hitachi and Bechtel Corp., and by the Department of Energy (DOE) under a cooperative agreement to have the North Anna project serve as a “reference” application for other utilities considering applying to build an ESBWR.
A second utility consortium, NuStart Energy Development LLC, is working with the DOE under a similar agreement to develop a reference COL application for Westinghouse AP1000 reactors.
ABB commissions world’s largest SVC
In early December, ABB announced that it had completed work on what is now the world’s largest static VAR (volt-amperes reactive) compensator (SVC).
The SVC, which entered service on December 5, is at Allegheny Power’s Black Oak Substation near Rawlings, Md. (Figure 2). The unit will enhance the reliability of Allegheny’s 500-kV Black Oak-Beddington transmission line—one of the most congested on the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland (PJM) Interconnection network—by quickly changing reactive power levels to stabilize line voltage. The SVC also will boost transmission capacity on multiple 500-kV lines in the PJM region.
The Black Oak installation uses ABB’s MACH 2 control system both to manage the operation of the SVC and to switch on and off the 500-kV capacitor banks on the lines entering and leaving the substation.
The project was initiated as part of PJM’s regional transmission expansion plan to identify the upgrades and additions needed to ensure reliability of its multi-state transmission system. “The Black Oak SVC will benefit millions of customers by providing a new level of reliability to a critical transmission line serving the Mid-Atlantic region,” said David E. Flitman, president of Allegheny Power. “Further, allowing more power to flow on existing lines is an important step in keeping pace with the region’s increased demand for electricity.”
The Black Oak SVC turnkey project was completed in just 14 months—no mean feat, given its size, complexity, and scope. “Collaboration was essential to meeting the aggressive timeline,” said Flitman. “If it were not for the Allegheny and ABB teams working so closely together, we simply would not have been able to get the system on-line this quickly.”
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