The power to make electricity at Grand Gulf Nuclear Station could rise for the first time in its 24-year history by 2012 — though not from a second reactor.

A public hearing is set for Oct. 29 before the Mississippi Public Service Commission to increase the Claiborne County plant’s capacity to 1,443 megawatts, which would make it the nation’s largest single reactor. In a petition filed in May, shortages in long-term baseload generation for Entergy customers in three states who receive power from the plant are cited as reasons for the upgrade.

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A public hearing to consider output increase at Grand Gulf Nuclear Station will be at 10 a.m. Oct. 29 at the Mississippi Public Service Commission located on the first floor of the Woolfolk State Office Building at 501 N. West St. in Jackson.

Separately, applications remain alive, at least on paper, for new reactors at Grand Gulf and at Entergy’s River Bend Station in St. Francisville, La., though issues with component costs and design prompted Entergy Nuclear to suspend both efforts in January, Vicksburg-based spokesman Don Arnold said.

“This is not taking the place of the second reactor,” Arnold said Wednesday as additional details of the upgrade were presented during an address before the Vicksburg Lions Club. He characterized the drive for a second reactor — now seven years into the planning phase and anticipated by local economic development pros as an inevitable boon for area housing, hotel occupancy and commerce in general — as just another leg in a long drive down the interstate.

“We’re still heading in that direction,” Arnold said. “But, we’ve let off the gas a little bit.”

System Energy Resources Inc. and South Mississippi Electric Power Association petitioned the PSC for the power-up at the plant. Entergy Corporation owns all common stock in System Energy, which in turn has 90 percent ownership and leasehold interest in Grand Gulf from which the plant’s power is sold to Entergy customers in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. South Mississippi EPA owns 10 percent interest in the plant and receives 10 percent of energy generated by the state’s only nuclear plant for its 56-county customer base in the state.

With the new output, Grand Gulf would surpass the most productive reactor at the Palo Verde power plant in Arizona. That reactor generates 1,311 megawatts, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. Also, refueling schedules will be standardized to every 24 months as a result of the capacity upgrade.

Approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is required for the “extended power uprate,” specifically for an increase in thermal operating limits which will increase the steam flow needed to produce the extra wattage in the generator. Total investment in the plan has reached $574.7 million, Arnold said.

Grand Gulf makes electricity by using the heat from a controlled nuclear reaction to boil water. The resulting steam is piped to another area of the plant where it spins a generator before being piped, again, to the cooling tower before the water is returned to the Mississippi River.

In a federally underwritten process to encourage more nuclear plants, an application was filed for a second reactor at the Grand Gulf site in 2002, which led to early site approval five years later. The second phase, applying for a construction and operating license then began, but was suspended.

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, with which Entergy Nuclear had contracted to build the core of the new reactor, has sent revised design documents to federal regulators on the same key component spurned by Entergy but is still in line to power two U.S. nuclear plants.

Updates to the design, known formally as the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor, represented a “key milestone” toward the company’s goal of having the most complete portfolio of nuclear reactors licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to statements issued following the submission.

“As the United States debates energy policy, nuclear power should play a pivotal role, as nuclear generates virtually carbon-free electricity,” read part of a statement in September from Jack Fuller, president and CEO of the joint venture between General Electric Co. and Hitachi Ltd.

The unit is one of five announced nuclear reactor designs proposed in licensing applications currently under review by the NRC. Differences among the five center on accident risk, which is determined by complex mathematical formulas that are updated with each revision.

Michigan-based Detroit Edison and Virginia-based Dominion Energy have submitted construction license applications using the ESBWR technology, while Entergy Nuclear has scouted multiple vendors since the start of the year. Arnold said the breakdown between the two entities stemmed from cost estimates.

“They essentially tripled the price they wanted to build it for,” Arnold said, theorizing demand in Asia, where nuclear energy is bustling, and France, where spent fuel is recycled rather than stored, may also have played a part.

Decisions on Grand Gulf and River Bend Station will depend on market conditions when licenses are granted in about 2012, with any new construction at Grand Gulf unlikely until 2020 at the earliest, Entergy officials have said.

“We’re definitely taking it into consideration,” Entergy Nuclear spokesman Danny Blanton said of GE Hitachi’s revision when reached Wednesday. “We’re considering several different designs from several different companies.”

Three other firms have design plans for proposed reactors up for NRC approval  — Japan-based Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, France-based AREVA and Pennsylvania-based Westinghouse Electric Company, part of the Toshiba group of companies and a listed participating designer with GE Energy in the NuStart Energy consortium of Entergy Nuclear and nine other power companies.

In 2008, Westinghouse joined with Baton Rouge-based The Shaw Group Inc. to build reactor parts in Louisiana for plants in Florida and Georgia, while Chicago-based Exelon Corp., the largest U.S. nuclear operator and NuStart member, decided against the ESBWR for a new reactor planned in Texas.

Wilmington, N.C.-based GE Hitachi has two nuclear designs, the ESBWR and the 1,350-megawatt Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR), certified by the NRC in 1997 and in operation in Japan. The company has said both are expected to have up to 40 percent lower operation costs due to increased capacity and simpler systems.

A lingering issue is permanent storage of spent fuel rods, which are radioactive. President Barack Obama has said he does not favor any new nuclear plants until decisions are made on what to do with the rods, most of which remain in water tanks at plants. A decades-long plan for permanent storage at Yucca Mountain, Nev., has been scrapped.

Grand Gulf was completed after an 11-year construction period and cost about $3 billion. A second reactor would have an estimated five-year construction period and cost about the same.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com