LYNCHBURG, Va. (WDBJ) – A major energy project hopes to power homes and businesses in Campbell County with Nuclear Energy. Appalachian Power has plans to build a small modular reactor in the Joshua Falls area and on Thursday night it held an open house to answer questions, address neighbor’s concerns, and educate people about the project.
“We’re not some external entity that comes in to the community, we are the community. We live in the community, we go to school, and church, and we shop, and we use the the services, and we want to do that here from the very beginning. We want to be transparent and we want to share what’s going on at the facility,” said AEP Vice President of Projects and Services Shane Lies.
AEP said that its small modular reactors are meant to deliver safe, reliable, and clean energy. They are smaller than traditional nuclear power plants but can provide enough energy to power as many as 500,000 homes. When complete the Joshua Falls facility could producer up to 300 megawatts of power.
Lies said that the project will have major economic benefits for Campbell County.
“Not only will it bring in construction jobs, not only will it have the full time staffing, but just think about the other opportunities that it will bring in, the additional restaurants, the additional hospitality. A lot of other industry will move in here and then you think about the bigger picture of having a clean, dispatchable source of power here and the businesses that will attract to the Appalachian area will benefit everybody,” said Lies.
People living near the proposed site have a number of concerns about the project. During the Open House they got to discuss these with AEP staff and learn from nuclear energy experts.
“The only things I’m concerned about are the safety and the value of the properties of people who live there. Other than that I see it as a positive thing having this nuclear power but at the same time for the people who actually live in that area that’s my only concern,” said Edward Day, who lives near the proposed project site.
Day said that he feels a little better after the meeting but that he still has some worries.
“I’m still very concerned but they answered a little bit of the questions so it’s not that bad. But still it’s something new so we’ll have to see what goes on,” he said.
Andy Calhoun lives in the Concord area and said he was also concerned about the potential impact of the project on nearby property values. However he said there is a lot of nuclear technology business in the area so a lot of people are familiar with nuclear energy and it’s benefits.
“I think it’s still very early in the process. Obviously there is approximately a ten year road to site approvals, licensing, and so forth. Even between now and then, when the SMR would actually be put in, I anticipate that there will be advances in nuclear technology that may not even be on the table right now,” said Calhoun.
Calhoun said he thinks the open house was beneficial and he looks forward to future public engagement from AEP.
“Questions were answered kind of in a general sense because I still think there is a lot of it that we don’t know but I think the consensus overall is positive,” he said.
AEP stressed that the reactor is safe, saying its size and emergency protocols will keep people protected.
“At a nuclear plant. Our first job is not to generate electricity. Our first job is to protect the health and safety of the public, and that’s going to be the same with this small modular reactor,” said Lies. “We have had nearly 100 nuclear units operating in in the United States for roughly 50 years. We have a tremendous amount of lessons learned and we know how to manage the risks of nuclear power.”
Lies said that the size of a small modular reactor is a major benefit when it comes to safety.
“So, for instance, at a larger plant like Cook plant (a nuclear plant in Indiana), we have an emergency planning zone around the property that’s a 10 mile radius and on a bad day, should it ever happen, we would have to be prepared to evacuate a portion of that 10 mile emergency planning zone. Because a small modular reactor is small, the emergency planning zone is right at the site boundary. So there would be no larger emergency planning zone that would impact the community,” said Lies.
Lies said it is also easier for small modular reactors to shutdown in the event of an emergency.
“The safety features are all passive. You don’t need power. You don’t need large emergency diesel generators. You don’t need safety related pumps. The small modular reactor will be designed so that it can safely shut itself down without intervention from the operators and without power,” he said.
The facility will also have an emergency response organization ready to respond 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to give operators the support they need to safely shut the unit down and maintain it in a safe shutdown.
The reactor is still a long way away from becoming a reality. The project likely won’t be completed until the mid 2030s.
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