Georgia Power’s troubled two-unit Vogtle nuclear construction project, currently scheduled for completion of the first unit in November of 2021, is unlikely to meet that timeline, according to Engineering News-Record. Testimony filed with the Georgia Public Service Commission by its Vogtle Monitoring Group found, “Since inception of the project in 2009, all [Integrated Project Schedule] iterations have been overly aggressive and unachievable. The history of the project has shown that the [Commercial Operate Dates] projected by {Southern Nuclear Company] have ultimately been required to be delayed,” the monitors continued, concluding that “there still exists a high likelihood of the COD not being achievable.”
The vastly over-budget 2,000-MW project has seen its costs go even higher as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, which has hit the project workforce and, according to estimates by the Atlanta-based Southern Company, added an additional $150 million to $250 million to the multibillion dollar construction project.
The utility continues to say it is on schedule for the first unit of the Westinghouse AP1000 pressurized water reactor to go into service in 2021 and the second unit to fire up for commercial operation in 2022. The current cost estimate for the two units is $27 billion.
In South Carolina, the failed, two-unit AP 1000 twin to the Vogtle project, V.C. Summer, owned by public power system Santee Cooper, continues to generate controversy. The feisty statewide online news service Fits News reports, “According to a letter from the S.C. Office of Regulatory Staff (SCORS) addressed to multiple ranking lawmakers, Santee Cooper failed to provide the agency with relevant ‘materials in its possession’ during a recent review of the utility’s latest financial moves.”
Fits News charged that Santee Cooper is stiffing the state regulators as part of a lobbying effort to prevent the statewide public power agency from being dismantled and sold. The news service commented, “To recap: Santee Cooper is up to its eyeballs in debt thanks to its role in NukeGate – a legislatively encouraged command economic debacle that has set South Carolina ratepayers and taxpayers back by around $10 billion (and counting).
“Santee Cooper and its crony capitalist partner – SCANA – expended this vast sum of cash on the construction of a pair of next-generation nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer generating station in Jenkinsville, S.C.
“The only problem? The reactors were not completed, and SCANA and Santee Cooper executives repeatedly lied to the public (and bondholders) about the status of this project.
“In fact, Santee Cooper proposed a huge rate hike just one week before pulling the plug on the reactors back in July 2017.”
At the same time, The Nerve, a South Carolina online site that digs deep into state government, reported that debt-ridden Santee Cooper this year made incentive bonuses of more $5 million to 1,463 employees, averaging $3,500. Leading the list was deputy CEO Charles Duckworth, who got $165,000, on top of an annual salary of $732,000. CEO Mark Bonsall did not participate in the incentive bonuses. He makes over $1 million per year.
According to The Nerve (slogan: “Where government gets exposed), 22 Santee Cooper employees make more than $200,000 a year.
State legislators had been considering a bid from Florida utility giant NextEra Energy to buy the state-owned generation and transmission agency, a plan from Virginia-based Dominion Energy, which earlier bought South Carolina investor-owned utility SCANA Corp., which was Santee Cooper’s partner in the nuclear fiasco, to take over operating Santee Cooper, and a reform proposals from Santee Cooper. Those discussions cratered when Covid-19 hit the U.S. Santee Cooper’s electricity is sold to some 2 million customers through the state’s 20 electric cooperatives.
–Kennedy Maize