A Nuclear Phoenix? : Concern about Climate Change is Spurring an Atomic Renaissance (By Jim Motavalli)
Sitting in the belly of the beast—Dominion’s 2,000-megawatt Millstone nuclear power plant in Waterford, Connecticut—the company’s chief nuclear officer, Dave Christian, seems an unlikely environmentalist. But he says concern about climate change is what got him involved in the peaceful pursuit of the atom in the first place.
“I started studying climate science in the 1970s after reading a book [published in 1974] entitled Technology, Society and Man by Richard C. Dorf,” Christian says. “It was a very thoughtful study of the feedback mechanisms that go into global warming.”
Dominion is the kind of big power player that has long had an antagonistic relationship with the environmental movement. In addition to Millstone Units 2 and 3 (Unit 1 was shut down in 1998), the $45 billion company operates two nukes in Virginia, owns 7,900 miles of interstate natural gas pipelines, 6,000 miles of electrical transmission lines and 965 billion cubic feet of underground natural gas storage. ...
