Opinion ID: 1619439
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Tyrone Energy Park as a Whole.

Text: The owners here do not dispute that condemnation properly may be sought for public use in the reasonably foreseeable future [10] as well as for a use that is immediate. They claim, however, that the Power Company's future needs for electrical energy are insufficient to justify building the Tyrone facility and that the decision to condemn for construction of the facility is therefore so lacking in necessity as to be without reasonable basis and an abuse of discretion. Because of the substantial delay between the decision to build a power plant of the size here involved and the time at which it can be placed in service, power companies must necessarily base their decisions to build new facilities upon projections of demand running a number of years into the future. In this case Northern States Power introduced projections showing that by 1985 it will have a shortage in both generating capacity and energy production capability. [11] The testimony indicated that the latter deficiency is here the more serious, as a result of the fact that much of the Company's present generating capacity is in the form of peak load facilities. As explained at the trial, peak load units tend to have relatively high fuel costs and are designed to be operated primarily during periods of peak electrical demand, while base load facilities use low cost fuels and are generally operated on a twenty-four hour per day basis. Peak load units thus operate at lower sustained availabilities than base load units. The Power Company's evidence tended to show that by 1985, when the first Tyrone unit is scheduled for operation, there will be a substantial need for additional base load energy production capability. The Tyrone units are base load facilities intended by the company to meet this need. We are of the opinion that a reasonable ground exists for the Power Company's decision to construct additional base load capacity. It is true that the first Tyrone unit to come in service will more than make up for shortages predicted then to exist. However, utilities must possess considerable discretion in determining the size of units to be built. We do not think the amount of excess capacity that may result in 1985 from construction of the first Tyrone unit was shown to be of such magnitude as to be unreasonable. The completion date for the second unit to be constructed at the Tyrone site is now said by Northern States Power to be indefinite. [12] The owners rely heavily upon this as indicating the lack of any reasonable need to condemn their lands. We think that it was not improper for the Power Company to condemn on the basis of a twounit complex notwithstanding indefinite timing as to the second unit. This is so because the evidence tended to show that the amount of land required for a twounit facility is not substantially greater than that needed for a single unit. The evidence indicated that a principal determinant of the land area needed is the size of the exclusion area. At this point it suffices to say that the exclusion area is a kind of buffer zone that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requires be maintained around a nuclear reactor. The area is described by a radius about the reactor calculated in accordance with guidelines promulgated by the NRC. [13] According to undisputed testimony at the trial, where two independent reactors are involved, as here, the exclusion area for the two is found by determining it for each reactor on an independent basis, which results in a circle centered on each reactor, and then laying in common tangents to flatten the sides. In the case at bar, the exclusion area for each reactor was calculated to be a circle with radius of .913 mile, and the two reactors are to be located 440 feet apart. The exclusion area for the two reactors, then, is the area that would be produced by splitting a circle 1.826 miles in diameter in half, moving the semicircles apart 440 feet, and filling in the thin rectangle between them. Thus, the undisputed evidence establishes that the additional land area called for by the planned second unit is small in comparison to the total area needed and that locating the units together will result in a large saving of land over what would ultimately be required if the Power Company limited the Tyrone facility to a single reactor and located a second unit elsewhere at a later date. It is only the need for the second reactor that is indefinite at this time. We think that the Power Company's conduct in planning and condemning on the basis of a two-reactor facility cannot be said to be a gross abuse of discretion. The owners' objections based upon an asserted lack of necessity for the Tyrone Energy Park as a whole cannot be sustained.