Georgia Power’s long-troubled, over-budget, and consistently off schedule two-unit, 2,000-MW Vogtle nuclear construction project has taken another hit. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported last Wednesday (May 19) that Georgia Power and Southern Nuclear, both subsidiaries of Atlanta-based utility giant Southern Co., told Peach State utility regulators that the first of two new reactors, the only nuclear power plant construction projects in the U.S., that they were pushing the startup date for the first unit into the first three months of 2022, scrapping their recent target of November 2021.
The newspaper noted, “Only a few weeks ago, the timeline was pushed back from November to late December.” In early December, the trade publication Engineering News-Record told the Georgia Public Service Commission that it expected more delays in the oft-delayed construction project. The company said the delay could add $25 million/month to the plant’s cost.
Construction of the two units began in 2009, with an anticipated startup in 2016 and 2017. The cost estimate was $14 billion, with Georgia Power’s 45.7% share at $6.1 billion, and the remainder funded by state public power agencies – Oglethorpe Power Corp., Municipal Energy Agency of Georgia, and the city of Dalton’s utilities. The state PSC has no jurisdiction over the public power systems.
Reuters said financial analysts it contacted estimated the costs for both units have soared to more than $25 billion, driven in part by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, and the bankruptcy of the project’s lead contractor and supplier of the AP-1000 reactors, Westinghouse. Georgia Power has now forecast its capital cost exposure for the plant is about $8.5 billion. That’s well above the $7.3 billion the Georgia regulators have said is reasonable.
Unit 3 was in “hot functional testing,” the last step before trying for commercial operation. Power Magazine quoted investment bankers Mizuho Group that the tests showed unexpected vibrations in the plant’s pressurizer, a key component in light-water pressurized water reactors. In PWRs, the pressurizer increases the temperature of the hot water that travels to steam generators, where it turns a separate source of non-radioactive water into steam to turn a steam turbine.
How the state PSC will react to the latest bad Vogtle news. The state regulators have been constant supporters of the project, as its costs have balooned and schedule slipped over more than a decade.
–Kennedy Maize