Speaking to a packed lecture hall of enthusiastic first-year students Feb. 1, 2012, Dominion President and Chief Nuclear Officer of the Dominion Nuclear business unit of Dominion Generation David Heacock (Engineering ’79) discussed a fascinating array of industry-related issues, ranging from the viability of alternative energy sources to possible risk-management oversights at Japan’s tsunami-hobbled Fukushima nuclear reactor to the complex future of nuclear power in the United States.
“This was an absolutely stellar presentation from one of the leading experts in the nuclear power industry,” says McIntire Professor Bob Kemp. “Our students were immensely privileged to have heard from someone with such a deep understanding of the scientific, political, economic, and business factors associated with the global energy industry.” Kemp teaches COMM 1800 (“Making Business Work”), the class to which Heacock spoke.
Industry Issues
Heacock began his presentation by impressing upon students the magnitude of Dominion’s role as a power supplier in the United States, noting that the company—with almost 16,000 employees in 16 states—is the leading provider of energy and energy services in the Midwest, Northeast, and mid-Atlantic regions of the country. Noting that some 35 percent of the company’s generation revenues come from nuclear power, Heacock also explained some of the logistical difficulties associated with alternative energy sources such as wind and solar power. “The wind blows when it feels like it—but we use power when we feel like it,” he said, explaining that the wind is a very unreliable power source relative to conventional generation.
A widely recognized leader in the global nuclear power industry, Heacock then went on to discuss the much-publicized meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi reactor in the wake of Japan’s devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami. (Heacock was part of a team of industry experts that stayed in daily contact with Japanese nuclear officials and helped to provide reliable information to the U.S. government and news media.) Conceding that the 2011 quake and tsunami were tremendously powerful, Heacock nevertheless expressed the opinion—backed up by an impressive set of diagrams and statistics—that the Fukushima Daiichi reactor probably shouldn’t have been built in the location it was, given the frequency with which Japan experiences waves of the magnitude that struck the plant.
Heacock then discussed the earthquake that struck the Charlottesville area Aug. 23, 2011, and the resulting concern over the safety of the nearby Lake Anna nuclear power plant. After first providing a painstaking account of the lack of damage to the plant, Heacock then went on to discuss the tremendous lengths to which Dominion, in partnership with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, went to ensure the safety of the plant prior to its reopening. “We had 120,000 people-hours of inspection over the course of the 81 days that the plant was closed, and thousands and thousands of pages of documentation,” Heacock told the audience. “The bottom line was, we found nothing wrong—not a single broken bolt.”
After his presentation, Heacock took questions from an intrigued audience. Students asked about such subjects as the future of the nuclear industry in the wake of Fukushima; the degree to which nuclear power plants may be viewed as threats to national security; and what sort of competition Dominion faces in the energy industry.
Heacock answered, respectively, that when natural gas becomes more expensive, nuclear energy will likely come back in vogue, although nobody knows when such a price shift will occur; that nuclear power plants are incredibly well-fortified against attacks of all kinds, and have become even more so since the attacks of 9/11; and that dispersed, individual-level “disruptive technologies” likely pose the greatest threat to centralized purveyors of power such as Dominion.
Powerful Partnership
Heacock’s address came as the last in a series of talks from Dominion executives—including CEO Tom Farrell and Senior Vice President Mary C. Doswell—to COMM 1800 students. Dominion has been a key supporter of COMM 1800 since 2010, providing not only outstanding classroom presentations from corporate leaders, but also significant funding for the course, as well as valuable networking events.
“Dominion has been a tremendous supporter of business education not only for McIntire students, but for students across the University,” says McIntire’s Assistant Dean for Corporate & Foundation Relations Allison Teweles, pointing out that COMM 1800 is one of the most popular courses available on Grounds, and is a prerequisite for McIntire undergraduates. More, she says, Dominion’s participation in COMM 1800 has provided students with compelling real-world examples of the concepts they learn in class, and, importantly, has offered students a superb roster of role models as they make key decisions about their academic and career paths. “We are incredibly grateful for the fruitful partnership we’ve enjoyed with Dominion over the past years, and we look forward to finding more opportunities to partner with the company in the future,” Teweles says.