Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell wants to push forward with nuclear power in Virginia, including a proposed third reactor at the Lake Anna Power Station in Louisa County, despite the current turmoil in Japan.
“I think when you look at what’s happening in Japan and low levels of radiation being emitted and potential meltdowns in a number of reactors, it’s certainly a cause for concern,” McDonnell told The Washington Examiner.
But, he added, new technology makes it “unlikely” that there would be similar problems with any new plants built in Virginia, or that the state would see any cataclysmic events that could affect power stations in Surry and Louisa counties.
Dominion Power currently has a third reactor in the works at Lake Anna.
“I think nuclear is a huge part of America’s future,” McDonnell said. “They’re expensive to build, but they’re relatively inexpensive to operate because the fuel cost is virtually nothing, there’s no carbon footprint, so this is a strategy we ought to pursue.”
“I think it’s just wrong to write off an entire industry because you have one event, whether it’s Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf and you write off the offshore driling industry like President Obama’s done, or you start to say, ‘Well, we shouldn’t be building nuclear plants because of one reactor event,’” he continued. “What we should do is learn from it, what are the regulations we need, what’s the new technology we need. But the spirit of Americans is to achieve and to overcome and to fix problems, not to give up, and so I am bullish about moving forward with nuclear power.”
