Switching to the Atom

Convinced that nuclear power can at last meet or beat the cost of other sources of electric energy, Virginia Electric and Power Co. last June ordered a giant 750,000-kw. atomic power plant to be built on Hog Island in the James River near Norfolk. Last week the utility company doubled its bet, told Westinghouse Electric to put up two 800,000-kw. atomic-fueled reactors and generators on the same site. The price tag: $200 million.

That order is part of a nationwide surge toward atomic power. More than 60% of the new generating capacity ordered by utility companies so far in 1966 will be nuclear, as against only 22% last year. U.S. utilities have committed themselves to spend no less than $2.6 billion for nuclear power over the next six to seven years. Fifteen nuclear plants are already operating; nine more are under construction, 22 on order, and another half a dozen planned.

Spur from Subsidy. Today's atomic installations go up in units large enough to light whole cities, or even states. At Lake Keowee, S.C., Duke Power Co. is building a $157 million plant with Babcock & Wilcox reactors that will generate 1,664,000 kw.--enough for South Dakota, Vermont and Nevada. Commonwealth Edison is busy expanding its Dresden plant 50 miles southwest of Chicago into an 1,800,000-kw. complex capable of serving a population equal to that of Baltimore and San Francisco combined. As an increasing number of power companies do, Atlantic City Electric, Philadelphia Electric, Delmarva Power & Light, and Public Service Electric & Gas Co. recently teamed up to order two 1,100,000-kw. plants for a southern New Jersey site. Though nuclear power today provides less than 1% of the nation's electric energy, the Atomic Energy Commission expects that it will account for 25% of a much larger total by 1980.

Spurred partly by $1.3 billion of Government subsidy but more by the competition between Westinghouse and front-running General Electric for plant-building orders, nuclear power costs have dropped so far that atomic plants in some areas come cheaper than the conventional variety. Nine years ago, the first commercial reactor at Shippingport, Pa., generated electricity for 65 mills per kwh. The Oyster Creek plant of Jersey Central Power & Light, due to open next year, is expected to run for 4 mills per kwh, as does Consolidated Edison's Indian Point plant 30 miles up the Hudson River from Manhattan. That is 33% less per kw-h than it costs Con Edison to make power from coal in Manhattan. Even the TVA, though blessed with abundant sources of coal, will switch to fissionable fuel at its new Decatur, Ala., plant, largest (2,200,000 kw.) of its kind.

Kick from Fossils. Despite atomic inroads, the fossil fuels have a lot of kick left. Battling to save the market they have long dominated, coalmen have turned to unit trains, automated mining equipment, and mine-mouth generating plants transmitting power across huge distances via super-high-voltage lines. Nuclear plants remain too costly for small utility companies or sparsely populated regions. In such Southwestern states as Texas, utility men insist that they will rely on cheap natural gas for years. With the total U.S. demand for electricity doubling every decade, even General Electric figures that coal consumption in U.S. power plants will more than double between now and 1980.

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