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From Both Barrels
Consumers Pay
For Blunder?
By GEORGE BOWLES
The Virginia Electric and Power Co. efforts to saddle its customers with the cost of a multimillion dollar nuclear reactor planning blunder could place at risk another of Vepco’s pet projects, the controversal coal slurry pipeline.
Hearings held before the State Corporation Commission last week illustrated, once again, the power company’s monumental “chutzpah.” (This is the quality best illustrated by the case of the boy who, after having been convicted of murdering his parents, asks the court for leniency because he is an orphan.)
What Vepco is seeking is a $650 million rate hike bail-out over the next 10 years. The money would be used to cover the loss the company sustained by its allegedly belated closedown of nuclear reactor No. 3 at its North Anna plant in Louisa County. Vepco’s critics say the company erred by continuing work on the reactor long after it became
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