Georgia Power’s two-unit Vogtle nuclear construction project is facing new delays and cost hikes, bringing the total cost of both units to as much as $27 billion. The utility’s parent, Atlanta-based Southern Company, said the new delay and costs will add $460 million to the price tag, bringing its share of the units to $9.2 billion.
How much the latest delay will cost is in doubt. Savannah TV station WSAV reported that the state Public Service Commission’s public interest advocacy staff “and their witnesses recently testified the overrun may be closer to $1 billion.” The AP reported the $27 billion total cost figure.
Southern said the latest delays in the project – the only nuclear station under construction in the U.S. – were a linked to “productivity challenges and additional time for testing and quality assurance.” Staffing the project has long been a problem. Having completed hot functional testing, Unit 3 is about 99% complete. Unit 4 is some 93% complete. The reactors are at an existing site of two operating nuclear plants.
The delay is the latest blow to the vastly over-budget and off-schedule 2,000-MW project. In late June, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced it was sending a special inspection team to Vogtle to examine problems with electric cabling at Unit 3. In May, the company announced it was delaying the anticipated startup date from November 2021 to 2022 to the first quarters of 2022 and 2023. The latest snag, the utility said, pushes the optimistic dates to the second quarters of both out-years.
Georgia Power chief financial officer Andrew Evans told Bloomberg, “Our expectations have slipped just a quarter, but you have to think about that this is a construction we have been working on for a decade. Our No. 1 priority is to construct an asset to produce power beyond the year 2100.”
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.
Georgia Power, under an agreement with the state regulators to cap recoverable construction costs in rates at $7.3 billion, the utility will have to eat the financial costs of the latest setbacks.
Consumer and environmental groups expressed no surprise at the latest Vogtle developments. Bryan Jacobs of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, based in Knoxville, Tenn., told WSAV, “This latest delay should not come as a surprise to anyone that’s been paying attention because every schedule that Georgia Power has put out before the Public Service Commission (PSC) has been bogus.”
Liz Coyle of the Atlanta consumer group Georgia Watch, agreed. She said, “It’s not a surprise and I think this is a moment when the power company is having to engage in a bit of a reality check.” Both said they were skeptical about the utility’s chances of getting Unit 3 running in the 2022 second quarter.
–Kennedy Maize