Premature Planting?

Ohio officials tout plans for new nuclear power plant 2

Ohio media sources are reporting that Piketon, a small town 60-miles south of Columbus, could be in line to get a new nuclear power plant.  Gov. Ted Strickland (D), Sen. George Voinovich (R), Rep. Jean Schmidt (R) and officials from Duke Energy and French nuclear company Areva were in Piketon Thursday to announce plans for the plant.

Piketon, the former site of a uranium enrichment facility, is considered highly desirable for a nuclear facility because of its high capacity transmission lines and water resources, reported the Columbus Dispatch. According to the energy companies, the plant would create 4,000 “clean energy” jobs in Piketon—impressive for a town of 2,000.

But not so fast.  Though some coverage incorrectly suggested that the Piketon plant is a done deal, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would beg to differ.

“We have not received an application for the plant,” said Scott Burnell of the NRC Office of Public Affairs.

According to Burnell, the process for acquiring NRC’s approval could take up to five years: first an 18-24 month period for the energy companies to collect the information for the NRC permit application, and then a 2.5-year period for the NRC to review the application.  “It could very likely go longer than that,” said Burnell.

If the Piketon initiative, led by Duke Energy, is successful, it would be the first nuclear plant to be constructed in the U.S. since construction began on the River Bend plant in Louisiana in 1977.

Sara Barz is a writer based in Seattle.

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  1. randino Posted 4:13 am
    19 Jun 2009

    Molly Ivins once said that Texas was the incubator for bad public policy.  Well, Ohio is not far behind when it comes to bad environmental policy.  The State House removed the ability of local governments to regulate gas wells, the results are coming in and the only people who are smiling are the drillers.  The State House is now considering throwing open the gates of our state parks to drillers just to make sure that there is not a square foot of the state that is not a free fire zone for the natural gas industry. Now this crap in Piketon.  Ohio is not a state.  It is a museum.  All our calendars are wrong. It is totally run by the utilities and the coal industry. Ohio - at the cutting edge of the past.Randy Cunningham  Cleveland, OH

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  2. Cato Posted 11:45 am
    19 Jun 2009

    Well, if relatively clean burning natural gas offends people like Randy, perhaps he should welcome the opportunity to expand domestic nuclear power generation in Ohio.  We can't have it both ways, people.  Nuclear power is the cleanest and most compact source of high output energy known to our science. And it produces zero carbon emissions.   You'll never get the gigawattage we need to power our nation from wind or solar alone---the environmental lobby will never allow the permits to get approved for a wind or solar powered economy on the scale you'd be talking about. You can't even get one lousy wind farm approved off Hyannis Port thanks to Ted kennedy.More to the point, Hyperion has developed a completely self-contained nuclear power generator that is about the size of a tool shed and can power 25,000 homes for 7 years leaving only a single piece of nuclear waste the size of a football.  It's essentially a nuclear battery. It should be in mass production  by 2015. It holds great promise to reduce coal combustion for baseload power generation. Meanwhile, we'll still need fossil fuels for decades to come. Until you develope a hydrogen powered jet plane or a solar powered tractor trailer truck, we're stuck with the usual suspects for energy. And as such, I prefer we utlize more of America's own resources for our energy and not those of some foreign dictator who's looking to fund his nuclear weapons program with our cash. So, let's wise up. This kneejerk negativism towards using our own resources is extremely hypocritical when you have an oil import bill the size of America's.  We apparently don't have any hangups at all about burning vast qualitities of foreign oil.  But heaven help us if we try to use our own people and natural resources to fuel our country's enbergy needs. More is the pity. Cato

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