Application is first in decades for a new nuclear reactor

NRG Energy, a partner in the South Texas Project nuclear plant, submitted the first application for a new nuclear reactor in the U.S. in nearly 30 years, the company’s chief executive said Monday.

NRG is seeking a license for the construction and operation of two nuclear reactors at its existing two-unit plant southwest of Houston in Bay City that it hopes will be producing electricity by 2014, although some observers think it could take much longer than that to get government approval.

NRG’s application is the first filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission since 1978, a year before a release of radioactivity at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania.

“Texas definitely needs the power, and we’re working with all appropriate and deliberate speed to get there,” said Thad Hill, president of NRG Texas.

NRG, based in Princeton, N.J., expects work on the first unit to begin at the end of 2010, with the new reactors to produce electricity by 2014 and 2015. The new reactors together would produce 2,700 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 2.4 million homes.

San Antonio Express-News