I'm headed back to the US for home leave soon and will spend some time visiting family in Virginia, so i thought a post on Virginia's plants would be appropriate. Virginia Electric Power Company licensed plants at two sites, Surry on the south bank of the James River near Norfolk and North Anna on man-made Lake Anna in Louisa County between Washington and Richmond.
The two Surry units were the first to operate, going on-line in 1972 and 1973. the plant is not far from the oldest brick dwelling, Bacon's Castle, a rare Jacobean style house dating from 1665 and named for Nathaniel Bacon, who led "Bacon's Rebellion" in 1676 and had captured this house and fortified it.
The North Anna site was originally anticipated to include four operating reactors, but only two of the originally planned facilities were completed. Unit 1 began operation in June 1978 and Unit 2 in December 1980. Unit 2's operational date was in part affected by the moratorium on licensing after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.
My first visit to a nuclear power plant was to North Anna Unit 1 in 1978. In August 2011 one of the largest earthquakes on the East Coast occurred with its epicenter near the plant. The plant shut down safely and did not sustain significant damage, though the earthquake exceeded in some respects the original design basis for the plant.
The VEPCO plants are now operated by Dominion Power which also operates the Millstone plants in Connecticut and until recently the Kewaunee Plant in Wisconsin. Dominion planned to construct a new reactor on the North Anna site and submitted an application in 2007 for a combined license (COL). After changing the possible design option for the new reactor, Dominion indicated in 2013 that it would revert to its original choice of the ESBWR and would submit necessary additional documentation in 2015.
