Belews Creek, NC: 1974 2.2gw Duke Power

(Satellite)

Duke also built a dam to create Belews Lake as the cooling pond for this plant.

Duke Energy Flickr, License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativeWorks (CC BY-NC-ND)
Belews Creek Steam Station, a two-unit coal-fired generating facility located on Belews Lake in Stokes County, North Carolina, began commercial operation in 1974. It is Duke Energy’s largest coal-burning power plant in the Carolinas with a capacity of 2,240 megawatts and consistently ranks among the most efficient coal facilities in the United States. Both of the Belews Creek generating units have been equipped with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) devices to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by approximately 80 percent. Duke Energy has also installed flue gas desulfurization equipment – commonly known as scrubbers – on both units. This equipment will reduce the station’s sulfur dioxide emissions by approximately 95 percent.
More info here: www.duke-energy.com/power-plants/coal-fired/belews-creek.asp
[Actually, this plant's information is here. In 2020-21, natural gas was added to the plant. It can burn a combination of natural gas and coal up to 50% gas. "For every pound of coal displaced with natural gas, sulfur dioxide is reduced by an estimated 99%, and carbon dioxide emissions are reduced by about 40% per megawatt-hour."]

"Units and In-Service Dates: 1,080 MW (1974), 1,080 MW (1975)" In 2009, the EPA rated the ash pond as High Hazard Potential. [gem]

This source rates the plant at 2.5gw.

Tony Josephs posted seven photos with the comment: "Belews  Creek  NC coal fired steam station."

William Mccue: Super critical … all us Furmanite guys hated that place . Them leaks ain’t no joke !

Scott Leonard: William Mccue I hear ya! Plugging HPFH tube leaks with explosives was another crazy job. Lucky up at Chalk Point classified Team Leak and Senior Engineering/ Perfex Services/ TEI as 2 of the crazy groups of guys. Of course I was there.

[I know that supercritical means that the water in the boiler tubes is under very high pressure. (For example, the first supercritical unit in the US operated at 4,500psi. [AEP in Philo, OH]) But I have no idea how you plug a pipe leak with explosives.]

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Another reminder that trees grow like weeds on the east coast and that it is hard to get good street views. At least this view shows that the plant was still operational in 2023.

Street View, Feb 2023

According to a USGS map, BX owns the spur that joins the RW railroad. According to a 1971 topo map, RW operates a former N&W route. The BX has a couple of cute blue switchers.

Satellite

Duke has the same complaint about the "100 dirtiest power plants" that I have: it should rate dirt/mwh, not just dirt. [TheStockesNews] Of course the big power plants are going to have more emissions than dinky, and dirty, old power plants.

According NASA observations, the selective catalytic reduction (SCR) equipment did a good job of reducing its nitrogen oxide emissions. (The y-axis is latitude, and the x-axis is longitude.)

NASA

 
The SCR was added in 2005, and the “flue gas desulfurization system” was added in 2008. [myfox8]

I wonder when the two old smokestacks were removed.

Sreenshot

All four smokestacks were standing in Feb 2019, but they were gone by Sep 2020.

Global Earth, Feb 2019

"Belews Creek Steam Station has 104 groundwater monitoring wells, 54 of which have been polluted above federal advisory levels based on samples collected between January 06, 2011 and April 15, 2019. Groundwater at this site contains unsafe levels of cobalt, lithium, boron, manganese, arsenic, radium, beryllium, molybdenum, mercury, selenium, chromium and sulfate....From 1974 to 1986, the station discharged wastewater with high selenium concentrations (150-200 ug/L) to Belews Lake. As a result, 19 species of fish were eliminated from the lake." [AshTracker]

In 2019, Duke agreed to dispose its ash in a lined onsite landfill. [DepartmentEnvironmentalQuality]

Moving the ash to a new lined landfill will eliminate the unlined waste ponds. [MtairyNews]

Note the dam that they built near the top of this satellite map to create their ash pond. [epa, p15] The pond looks like it still contains a rich variety of crud.

Google Earth, May 2021

This article caused me to look for an emergency spillway for the earth dam. At first, I was shocked that I could not find one. I would rather see some toxic water go over a spillway than have a breach and send "12.5 million tons of coal ash" down the Dan River. I guess the saving grace is that the watershed for this dam is just the pond itself. So the contribution of water from a rain should be relatively small.

Satellite

At least the deluge of water would dump directly into Dan River instead of into the Belews Lake. Thus the deluge wouldn't wipe out the lake's dam.

1971 Belews Lake Quad @ 24,000

appvoices
"Importantly, the sites Duke has not committed to excavating are the largest in the state, including the 12.5 million tons of ash at Belews Creek, the 11.5 million tons at G.G. Allen, and the 27 million tons of coal ash stored at the Buck and Marshall plants. That amounts to more than 70 million tons — the bulk of Duke’s coal ash — still sitting in leaking, unlined ponds seeping and discharging into our waterways."
[But wait, they agreed to remove the pond in Jan 2020. [TheStokesNews] One can stop air pollution by shutting down the power plant. But shutting down the power plant does not stop groundwater pollution nor the hazard of a dam breach.]

By 2017, Duke had accumulated an impressive criminal record concerning lying and procrastination with respect to its ash pond hazards. [WaterKeeper]