Politico , By ZACH BRIGHT, 07/31/2023
Critics blast the ever-extending timeline and bloated budget of Plant Vogtle's expansion. Supporters say the Georgia project is part of a nuclear revival.
Georgia Power was set to reach a milestone last month and open the first of two long-awaited nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle. Then came a delay — and more uncertainty.
Missed deadlines are a familiar refrain for the project near Augusta, Ga. The expansion is placing the country's first major reactors built from scratch this century near two existing nuclear units brought online in the 1980s............................
The Vogtle expansion's arrival is a huge moment for the U.S. electric industry that experts and officials expect to ripple well beyond eastern Georgia. Never mind that the two new nuclear gems Southern is scrambling to add to its crown were supposed to be up and running in 2016 and 2017. Or that their cost has more than doubled to over $30 billion.
....................................... "Yes, we've had our challenges," CEO Chris Womack said during the company's annual meeting. "I'm confident that the state of Georgia and our customers, our company, the world, will be so proud of the work that we've done in bringing Vogtle online."
Spokespeople for Southern and Georgia Power did not provide updates on future nuclear investment plans when asked last week by E&E News.
'U.S. nuclear renaissance'
Vogtle's steps toward completion come as the Georgia Public Service Commission plans to decide how much ratepayer costs should rise to cover the project's overruns. And U.S. senators last week passed legislation that's supportive of the nuclear industry.
......................To help construct the expansion to Vogtle, the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office had issued $12 billion in loan guarantees to Georgia power providers. Its director, Jigar Shah, said in an interview that there were a lot of mistakes made and lessons learned........................
Clean energy groups like the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy warn that the enormous costs of units 3 and 4 could fall on ratepayers, because monopoly utilities, they say, aren't meaningfully regulated in the region.
"There is no nuclear power plant that we're aware of that has ever come on in the Southeast on budget or on schedule," Stephen Smith, the alliance's executive director, said in an interview.
.......................Challenges ranged from workforce constraints — the project required 9,000 builders, welders, electricians at the peak of construction — to what critics called a lack of meaningful regulation from public utility commissions to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
"It's not that simple to manufacture these complex components and just stamp them together like Legos," Lyman said.
Smith from the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy pointed to difficulties at a similar South Carolina nuclear project.
An attempt to add two AP1000s to South Carolina's V.C. Summer nuclear plant fell through in 2017. The expansion was designed to be similar to Vogtle's and had an estimated $9.8 billion cost. But its price quickly ballooned, and its construction timeline was pushed back years past scheduled operational dates of 2016 and 2019.
Vogtle may have survived Westinghouse's bankruptcy, but the plant has "taken so long that the industry itself has kind of moved beyond the whole concept of AP1000s," Smith said......................................................... https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/31/vogtle-u-s-nuclear-energy-00106597
No comments:
Post a Comment