Griffith: Southwest Virginia projects reflect focus on new technology

Virginia Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-9th District, claimed Tuesday that not only will new venture announcements in Southwest Virginia convey employment and investments, “but they will contain our location in enjoyable new fields.”

A single of all those fields requires modest modular nuclear reactors (SMR).

Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Virginia Electrical power Strategy launched past thirty day period contains the spot of a professional SMR somewhere in Southwest Virginia, the initial in the United States, in the upcoming 10 a long time.

“SMRs are a subsequent-generation know-how that brings the positive aspects of conventional nuclear power without having some of its drawbacks,” Griffith mentioned in a release. “Nuclear generates clean energy, and it does so reliably, without the variability of solar and wind. On the other hand, the significant scale of standard nuclear crops can make them unsuitable to specific web sites. SMRs, as their title implies, demand a lesser physical footprint, an advantage for hilly terrain these kinds of as Southwest Virginia’s, and can be assembled at a factory and transported to a internet site.”

Griffith said Virginia “has the property to lead the way on SMRs.”

“The nuclear ability sector can attract its workforce from our universities with nuclear engineering packages, which include Virginia Tech,” he mentioned. “One of the world’s important nuclear corporations, BWX Technologies, is headquartered in Lynchburg. I have visited its facilities in Lynchburg and Erwin, Tennessee.”

Griffith said the SMR might be situated on an abandoned mine internet site, which is what he desires.

“When Governor Youngkin held his function in Smart County to communicate about SMRs, an occasion I attended, we spoke about the undertaking on an abandoned mine land web site,” he said. “As someone who has led initiatives to renew and reuse this kind of internet sites by way of bringing federal funding to Virginia through the Deserted Mine Land Financial Revitalization (AMLER) Plan, I am excited by the probability that land with an electrical power heritage could be utilised to home strength technologies of the potential.”

Security will be a precedence, he claimed. “As this task moves ahead, citizens of Southwest Virginia really should be certain that all safety protocols will be adhered to and that the land selected for the internet site will be examined for its suitably.”

Nuclear electric power will be a “valuable and trusted component of an all-of-the-previously mentioned technique, which will not exclude fossil fuels,” he extra.

Griffith reported other new financial advancement tasks involving new technological know-how contains Blackstone Information Companies, which will be locating in the Bluestone Enterprise and Know-how Park in Tazewell County, bringing an investment decision of $18 million more than 10 many years and developing five new higher-tech positions.

“The web page will host a information heart for cryptocurrency mining, which is based mostly on blockchain technology,” he reported. “Cryptocurrency is still a developing subject and has experienced its ups and downs. It is possible below to stay, and jobs these as this a single will aid make it far more secure.”

Another job is in Wise County, which would be the site of the Strength Discovery, Training, Mastering & Technological innovation Accelerator (DELTA) Lab.

Griffith explained the Electricity DELTA Lab, a collaboration concerning the Virginia Division of Strength, the Southwest Virginia Vitality Investigation and Progress Authority, and InvestSWVA, will provide a location for “new electricity technologies to be analyzed, created, and moved towards the commercial industry. It was formulated by means of a $975,000 AMLER grant. This internet site could be for strength what Menlo Park was for Thomas Edison as he invented entire world-switching systems like the light bulb and introduced them to professional markets.”

Griffith explained financial progress calls for an means “to adapt, to recognize what the long term holds and put together to fulfill it.”

“I think these assignments that have been unveiled will keep us in level of competition with other areas of the country and the earth past,” he said. “They supply the prospect of new careers and financial investment as

properly as diversification to give our regional overall economy a broader base.”

— Get in touch with Charles Boothe at [email protected]