Dominion says it will explore putting a small modular nuclear reactor in Louisa County

Dominion Energy said Wednesday that it has issued a request for proposals to evaluate the feasibility of developing a small modular nuclear reactor at its power plant in Louisa County.

The state’s largest electric utility said that the RFP is not a commitment to building a small modular reactor, or SMR, at its North Anna Power Station but is “an important first step” in determining whether the location and technology can serve future energy needs.

As the name suggests, a small modular reactor would be smaller and cheaper than a traditional nuclear power reactor and would produce less energy — perhaps upward of 300 megawatts, while for comparison Dominion’s North Anna plant is capable of nearly 1,900 megawatts — but it could be combined with others to scale up power generation at a site as needed. While some discussion in recent years has focused on possibly building an SMR in the coalfields of Southwest Virginia, those plans have not come to fruition and no commercial SMR has yet been built in the U.S.

“As Virginia’s need for reliable and clean power grows, SMRs could play a pivotal role in an ‘all-of-the-above’ approach to our energy future,” Dominion President and CEO Robert Blue said in a news release. “Along with offshore wind, solar and battery storage, SMRs have the potential to be an important part of Virginia’s growing clean energy mix.”

[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy .]

Dominion spokesperson Tim Eberly declined to specify which companies Dominion has reached out to about participating in the RFP but said in an email that “it’s safe to say that we invited the world’s leading SMR nuclear technology companies.”

The Lynchburg region is home to two large nuclear-industry firms: BWX Technologies and Framatome , a French company that has its North American headquarters in Lynchburg. Neither company responded to messages Wednesday asking if they plan to be involved in Dominion’s RFP in any way.

In October 2022 and again in March 2023 , Gov. Glenn Youngkin said he was pushing for the commonwealth’s first SMR to be built in Southwest Virginia. The LENOWISCO Planning District Commission commissioned a study that examined potential sites in Wise, Lee, Scott and Dickenson counties, and a second study that looked at whether the region could meet SMR supply chain needs.

But in March, Youngkin said that there are other sites that are “better suited for the first one, and that’s what we’re doing the work on.”

“The Commonwealth’s potential to unleash and foster a rich energy economy is limitless,” Youngkin said in the news release on Wednesday. “To meet the power demands of the future, it is imperative we continue to explore emerging technologies that will provide Virginians access to the reliable, affordable and clean energy they deserve.”

North Anna is one of two nuclear power plants that Dominion operates in Virginia, along with the Surry Power Station in Surry County. As of 2022, nuclear power accounted for 31% of electricity generation in Virginia, second only to natural gas at 54%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration .

A Dominion official previously said that the North Anna and Surry sites would be ideal for an SMR because of their existing facilities and connection to the grid. Furthermore, North Anna is already licensed for a third conventional reactor, and an SMR could be a substitute for that.

The push for new power sources comes as Dominion predicts that its peak electric load will increase by 5% annually over the next decade, largely due to the continued growth of data centers that power websites, online shopping and other digital services.

Large internet firms such as Amazon and Google run data centers in the commonwealth. Most are in Northern Virginia — Loudoun County’s “Data Center Alley” in Ashburn is billed as the largest concentration of data centers in the world, with more than 25 million square feet of operations — but not all are; for example, Microsoft has a campus in Mecklenburg County and a data center has been proposed in Pittsylvania County.

Dominion also announced Wednesday that it will ask state regulators this fall to approve a rider attached to customer bills that would allow the utility to recover costs associated with developing an SMR.

Legislation passed during the most recent General Assembly session capped that recovery charge at $1.40 per month for an average residential customer, but Dominion said it expects it will request an amount “substantially” below that.

Dominion’s announcements were part of a bill-signing event Wednesday at North Anna that included Youngkin; Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears; Sen. Dave Marsden, D-Fairfax; and Sen. Mark Peake, R-Lynchburg; along with other local and state officials. Marsden was the chief patron of the cost-recovery legislation.

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