Nowhere else in America is the nuclear neighborhood more crowded than around Delaware.
Nearly
10 percent of the nation's reactors stand within 20 to 30 miles of some
part of Delaware, including seven reactors no more than 25 miles from
New Castle County's border, and two others within 35 miles of
southwestern Sussex County.
The cluster, rivaled only by a collection of nuclear plants in central
Illinois, could grow in the coming years, according to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission and industry publications. Other plants operate
or are being contemplated only slightly farther away, both to the north
and south, as companies rush to join what has been described as an
emerging nuclear renaissance.
"One
of the strengths as we see it of the U.S. electric system, for a long
time, has been diversity," said Steven Kerekes, a spokesman for the
Nuclear Energy Institute. "That's why we see nuclear as something that
continues to be a strong component" as the nation works to reduce its
dependence on fossil fuels."
Exelon Corp. operates four reactors
to the state's northwest in Pennsylvania: two at Peach Bottom in York
County and two at Limerick in Montgomery County. Both put northern
Delaware well within the 50-mile circle where the NRC says food and
water contamination could be a problem in the event of an accident.
PSEG
operates three reactors along the Delaware River due east of the busy
Boyds Corner interchange, putting a wide swath of New Castle County
inside potential evacuation zones.
To the south, UniStar Nuclear
Energy filed a combined license application in July to build a
1,600-megawatt reactor at Constellation Energy's Calvert Cliffs plant
along the Chesapeake Bay's western shore. The reactor, less than 50
miles from Seaford, would be larger and simpler to operate than any now
in use around the country.
UniStar is a joint venture of
Constellation and EDF Group, the main electricity producer and
generator in France and a major supplier in Europe generally. The
company applied for a Maryland Public Service Commission license to
build and operate the Calvert Cliffs plant last month, and said it
would use a newly approved design developed by an international reactor
designer based in Paris.
Pennsylvania-based PPL last week
submitted an application to build a third reactor at its Berwick plant
southwest of Wilkes-Barre. PPL, which already has two reactors at
Berwick, has proposed using the same 1,600-megawatt "evolutionary"
reactor design that UniStar chose for Calvert Cliffs.
Dominion Energy has separately proposed a new reactor at its North Anna power station north of Richmond, Va.
Calvert
County commissioners already have offered $300 million in tax breaks to
support the Calvert Cliffs plan. But the proposal was immediately
criticized by Maryland's chapter of the Sierra Club and other
environmental groups, and recently sparked formation of a new
anti-nuclear group, the Chesapeake Safe Energy Coalition.
"We
believe that nuclear power is dirty and dangerous and expensive, and
that safer, cleaner and more affordable alternatives are available,"
said Johanna Neumann, spokeswoman for the nonprofit Maryland Public
Interest Research Group.
Salem County, N.J., resident Tom Pankok
disagreed. Pankok, a member of a New Jersey group that supports nuclear
energy, said in a recent letter to a group of Delaware anti-nuclear
activists that the American nuclear power industry has never caused an
injury to the general public.
"When you add to that the fact
that the state's four nuclear power plants, including Oyster Creek,
produce more than half of New Jersey's electricity with zero greenhouse
gas emissions, it becomes clear that nuclear is an important part of
the global-warming solution" he said.
