Surry Power Station is a nuclear power plant located in Surry County in southeastern

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the East Coast of the United States, Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography an ...

, in the South Atlantic United States. The power station lies on an site adjacent to the

James River The James River is a river in the U.S. state of Virginia that begins in the Appalachian Mountains and flows U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed April 1, 2011 to Ches ...

across from Jamestown, slightly upriver from Smithfield and

Newport News Newport News () is an independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. At the 2020 census, the population was 186,247. Located in the Hampton Roads region, it is the 5th most populous city in Virginia and 140th most populous city in the Unit ...

. Surry is operated by Dominion Generation and owned by Dominion Resources, Inc. The Surry plant is similar in appearance and design to its "sister plant" North Anna Power Station, located northwest of

Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States * Richmond, London, a part of London * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, California, a ...

Louisa County, Virginia Louisa County is a county located in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 37,596. The county seat is Louisa. History Prior to colonial settlement, the area comprising Louisa County was occupied by severa ...

History

The plant has two 3-loop Westinghouse

pressurized water reactor A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a type of light-water nuclear reactor. PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan and Canada). In a PWR, the primary coolant (water) is ...

s that went on-line in 1972 and 1973 respectively. Each reactor produces approximately 800

megawatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after Jame ...

s of power, for a combined plant output of 1.6 gigawatts. Surry Power Station draws its condenser cycle water directly from the James River, removing the need for the imposing

cooling towers A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and ...

often associated with nuclear plants. Repeated testing shows that Surry Power Station has minimal environmental impact and releases virtually no radiation or harmful emissions. The station site was originally designed for four units; however, only two reactors were built. With increasing energy demands in the United States, it is possible that more reactors will be built at Surry in the next few decades. In 2003, the

Nuclear Regulatory Commission The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy. Established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, the NRC began oper ...

(NRC) extended the operating licenses for both reactors from forty to sixty years. In 2016 its owner announced it intended in due course to seek an extension to eighty years of operation, to 2052 and 2053. This extension to 80 years was obtained in 2021. Surry was one of the plants analyzed in the

NUREG-1150 NUREG-1150 "Severe Accident Risks: An Assessment for Five U.S. Nuclear Power Plants", published December 1990 by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is a follow-up to the WASH-1400 and CRAC-II safety studies that employs the methodology of plan ...

safety analysis study.

Surrounding population

The

defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of , concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, and an ingestion pathway zone of about , concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity. The 2010 U.S. population within of Surry was 127,041, an increase of 21.9 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 2,292,642, an increase of 13.9 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Hopewell, Petersburg, Williamsburg, Newport News, Hampton, Poquoson, Portsmouth, Norfolk (30 miles to city center), Virginia Beach (47 miles to city center), and Richmond (50 miles to city center).

Events

• On July 27, 1972, two workers were fatally scalded after a routine valve adjustment led to a steam release in a gap in a vent line. • On May 8, 1979, FBI agents investigated a white crystalline substance that had been poured into 62 fresh fuels elements kept in storage at the plant, a day after plant officials made the discovery. Westinghouse metallurgists found no damage to the fuel elements, including the metal containers and zirconium rods holding the fresh fuel. • On December 9, 1986, a steam explosion (condensate feed piping ruptured due to internal erosion and over-pressurization when feed pump check valve failed) in the non-nuclear part of Unit 2 injured eight workers. Four later died. • On April 16, 2011, a

tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, alt ...

touched down in the plant's electrical switching station, disabling primary power to the plant's cooling pumps and causing the backup diesel generators to activate without incident. • On August 23, 2011, an earthquake in central Virginia automatically shut down Dominion's North Anna reactors 11 miles from the epicenter. The similar Surry reactors continued in operation and Dominion declared a
Notice of Unusual Event
(the least dangerous of a four-level emergency scale) for the Surry plant which was lifted later the same day.

Seismic risk

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at Surry was 1 in 175,439, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.

References

External links

Dominion's nuclear page
* * * {{U.S. Nuclear Plants Energy infrastructure completed in 1972 Energy infrastructure completed in 1973 Buildings and structures in Surry County, Virginia Nuclear power plants in Virginia Nuclear power stations using pressurized water reactors