Southern company new nuclear plant install#
Southern company new nuclear plant full#

The recommendation will be approved, modified or rejected by the PSC. The recommendation to proceed with the Vogtle project was supported by all owners of the project ‒ Georgia Power (45.7%), Oglethorpe Power (30%), MEAG Power (22.7%) and Dalton city (1.6%). 3 In Florida, Duke abandoned the nuclear project in favor of a US$6 billion investment into 700 megawatts of solar PV capacity, 50 megawatts of energy storage, 500 electric-vehicle chargers, and smart meters and grid modernization across the state. In recent weeks Duke Energy has abandoned plans for two AP1000 reactors in South Carolina and two AP1000 reactors in Florida (and in 2013, Duke abandoned plans for two AP1000 reactors in North Carolina). In several states, utilities and companies hold licenses to build new reactors, but those projects are being abandoned one-by-one and none will proceed in the foreseeable future. So Vogtle is the only new-build nuclear project still alive in the US after the abandonment of the two partially-built AP1000 reactors at the VC Summer plant in South Carolina. subsidiary Georgia Power filed a recommendation on August 31 with the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) to complete the two AP1000 reactors under construction at the Vogtle plant. Its costs and delays could deter other utilities from building such plants, even though they generate electricity without releasing climate-changing carbon emissions.Southern Co. Vogtle is the only nuclear plant under construction in the United States. The elected Georgia Public Service Commission will decide later who pays for the remainder of the costs. Georgia Power's 2.7 million customers are already paying part of the financing cost, and state regulators have approved a monthly rate increase of $3.78 a month as soon as the third unit begins generating power.

Oglethorpe and MEAG would sell power to cooperatives and municipal utilities across Georgia, as well in Jacksonville, Florida, and parts of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. The remaining shares are owned by Oglethorpe Power Corp., the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and the city of Dalton.

Georgia Power owns a minority of the two new reactors. “Reaching initial criticality is one of the final steps in the startup process and has required tremendous diligence and attention to detail from our teams.” “We remain focused on safely bringing this unit online, fully addressing any issues and getting it right at every level,” Chris Womack, chairman, president and CEO of Georgia Power, said in a written statement.

Southern company new nuclear plant full#

After that, operators are supposed to link the reactor to the electrical grid and gradually raise it to full power. Georgia Power said Unit 3 would continue startup testing to show that its cooling system and steam supply system will work at the intense heat and pressure that a nuclear reactor creates. The company has also said it had to repair a slowly dripping valve and diagnose a problem involving water flow through reactor coolant pumps.

Southern company new nuclear plant install#

Construction workers had failed to install supports called for on blueprints. The latest set of delays at Unit 3 included a pipe part of a critical backup cooling system that was vibrating during startup testing. That doesn't include $3.68 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid to the owners after going bankrupt, which brings total spending to more than $34 billion. The reactors are now supposed to cost more than $30 billion. The cost of the third and fourth reactors was originally supposed to be $14 billion. Unit 3 loading: Plant Vogtle Unit 3 begins nuclear fuel loading, marking next step toward finish Vogtle delay: Anticipated completion date of Plant Vogtle expansion put back by a month Unit 4 is projected to begin commercial operation sometime between this November and March 2024. The company now says Unit 3 could begin commercial operation in May or June. That makes the intense heat that will be used to produce steam and spin turbines to generate electricity.Ī third and a fourth reactor were approved for construction at Vogtle by the Georgia Public Service Commission in 2009, and the third reactor was supposed to start generating power in 2016. said operators reached self-sustaining nuclear fission inside the reactor at Plant Vogtle, southeast of Augusta. ATLANTA - A nuclear power plant in Georgia has begun splitting atoms in one of its two new reactors, Georgia Power said Monday, a key step toward reaching commercial operation at the first new nuclear reactors built from scratch in decades in the United States.