First New Nuclear Plant Will Be Built In Mississippi

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) held two public environmental scoping meetings at the Port Gibson City Hall in Port Gibson, Mississippi on June 19. The meetings are part of NRC's review of an application submitted by Entergy Operations Inc (EOI) for a combined license (COL) for construction and operation of a new nuclear power plant at it Grand Gulf Nuclear Station (GGNS) site in Claiborne County, Mississippi. The first meeting was held at 1 p.m. and the second meeting was held at 7 p.m. The NRC presented an overview of the COL environmental review process and described how the process will be implemented for the review of the GGNS COL application. AAEA participated in the meetings (see videos below).

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The proposed new reactor, designated GGNS Unit 3, would be located within a 2,100 acre site, situated approximately 6 miles northwest of Port Gibson, Mississippi. EOI currently operates one reactor, GGNS Unit 1 on the site and plans to construct Unit 3 adjacent to the existing reactor. Plans for a unit 2 never happened, but to avoid confusion, the proposed unit is being designated Unit 3. The construction site cleared for GGNS Unit 3 covrs approximately 234 acres within EOI's 2,100 acre site.

EOI submitted the application for the COL by letter dated February 27, 2008. The application was accepted for docketing on April 24, 2008. The application is liste under NRC's Agencywide Documents Access Management System (ADAMS)under accession number ML080640433. The EOI COL application is also available on the Internet.

In addition, roughly 30 NRC staffers visited Mississippi to gather data at Grand Gulf on June 16 and met with the New Plant organization June 17 through June 18.