Posted on 12/18/2017 3:35:50 AM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
The Georgia Public Service Commission on Thursday is set to decide the fate of Plant Vogtle, the only nuclear reactor under construction in the U.S., which is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
At Thursday’s hearing, a commission made of five elected officials, all Republicans, will vote on whether to permit Georgia Power’s new plan for the project, which includes an updated cost projection and construction timeline, or to cancel it.
Georgia Power is estimating $12.2 billion in costs for its 45.7 percent share of the project, and for the reactors to be producing electricity by 2021 or 2022.
This cost estimate is nearly double the company’s original projection, and the timeline is five years behind schedule. The cost of the project for Georgia Power and its co-owners exceeds $20 billion.
The commission's decision will come days after the embattled nuclear industry learned that House and Senate Republicans as part of a tax reform package would not grant the extension of a key tax credit for new nuclear production that could have benefited the Southern Co. plant.
Jeremy Harrell, policy director of Clear Path Action, a group that advocates for clean energy sources such as nuclear power, which has zero greenhouse gas emissions, said extending the tax credit could have sent a strong signal to Georgia’s regulators.
“Southern Co. has said this is essential for projecting financing of Vogtle,” Harrell told the Washington Examiner. “It's not an ideal situation.”
Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Co., has pitched Plant Vogtle since 2009 as a way to revive the U.S. nuclear industry to supplement an aging fleet, promising that two reactors planned for the site would give the state emission-free electricity for as long as 80 years.
Today, 60 percent of the carbon-free energy produced in the U.S. comes from the nation's existing 99 nuclear power plants. Nearly 20 percent of the nation’s electricity is provided by nuclear.
But in March, Westinghouse, the lead contractor on the project that designed the reactors, went bankrupt, imperiling the future of the plant.
In July, South Carolina utilities announced it would cancel a separate plan for two nuclear reactors in the state because of cost overruns after Westinghouse, also the reactor's designer for that project, went bankrupt. But Georgia Power pledged to press ahead with Plant Vogtle, a boon to advocates of nuclear power who stress its zero-emissions status and consider nuclear to be more reliable than wind and solar energy.
Supporters of the project are downplaying the impact of the lost nuclear production tax credit in the final GOP tax bill.
Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., a prominent Vogtle booster, told the Washington Examiner he expects Congress will extend the tax incentive later this year or early next as part of a package of “tax extenders” for expiring credits. Under current law, developers can receive the credit only if the reactors become active by the end of 2020. That would not meet Vogtle’s extended timeline, so Georgia Power is looking for an extension.
“I am committed to doing whatever I can to ensure that the Plant Vogtle project stays on track for completion to strengthen America’s energy security and to preserve the more than 6,000 Georgia jobs created by this project,” Isakson said. “I have been actively discussing this matter with constituent stakeholders as well as Senate and House leadership, and we are working on a path forward to get a nuclear tax credit extension passed this year or early next year.”
Georgia Power has other important backers. The Energy Department in September offered an additional loan guarantee of up to $3.7 billion to the companies building Vogtle. The department had already guaranteed $8.3 billion in loans to the companies.
The public power companies building the plant have asked the Public Service Commission to allow Georgia Power to recoup Vogtle's new costs from customers. But commission staff filed a document this month arguing that customers would incur too high of a cost to justify the economics of the project.
"Assuming the project is completed, ratepayers would incur significantly higher revenue requirements and a reduced economic benefit while the company's profits would increase," wrote PSC staff consultants Phil Hayet and Lane Kollen, and Tom Newsome, the PSC staff's utilities finance director.
Kurt Ebersbach, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center in Atlanta, who is advocating the commission oppose the plan, said the company’s expectations are unfair to ratepayers.
“It’s a very lopsided, heavy-handed proposal for Georgia Power to say we want the commission to approve a revised cost schedule and additional years of delay, in addition to assurances we will recover every last penny from customers,” Ebersbach told the Washington Examiner. “It’s unreasonable.”
John Kraft, a Georgia Power spokesman, insists the benefits of the project will outweigh costs.
“We remain confident that the unified recommendation to move forward with construction represents the best choice for customers while preserving the benefits of a new carbon-free energy source for our state,” Kraft told the Washington Examiner.
All the rest being true, NIMBY isn’t a problem here.
Have you folks ever been to rural Burke Co. Ga?
It’s not even really good for farmland. Vogle’s closest neighbor is the Savannah River Site. Next is Girard, Ga. The folks there are making out well off of leasing their land to the workers at the plant to park their RVs.
I sometimes go that way to Augusta. It’s 20 miles from no where.
With this nuclear plant, the problem is not with folks in Screven, Jenkins, Emmanuel, Jefferson or Richmond counties worried about their back yards. It is the NIMBY folks in San Francisco, Cambridge Mass and Madison raising a stink about THEIR backyard of Planet Earth.
Add to them the political pandering class living in Loudoun, Fairfax, Arlington, Stafford & Prince William Counties, VA plus Howard & Montgomery counties, MD.
Finally, add the Greater NYC residents of the MSM and it seems that everyone is gunning to stop any nuclear plant construction.
The one-off design approach of each plant ever built in the US is the major culprit. All of the fallout from changes required by the TMI accident should have been factored into this design as opposed to the plants that were under construction when it happened. Then there is always the over abundance of regulations
NIMBY? You have to admit, it sucks to be downwind of Fukushima’s 3 exposed nuclear cores just washing into the earth, sea and air, huh? Oh...wait...nuke threads pretend none of that even exists. Never mind.
The most efficient way to re-start the US commercial nuclear plant program would be to standardize the designs. If you look at the plants that built multiple reactors of the same design, the first one took the longest because of multiple design conflicts with its systems. The second plant takes about a 25% to 40% less time because they incorporated the needed design changes and if they built a third plant the time savings is approaching 50% or higher. That is what doomed WPPSS. 5 different reactor designs in 3 separate locations. And when they shut down plants 4&5 ( 1&4 we’re twins and 3&5 we’re twins) those two plants were only several months from the same phase of construction as their twins in less than half the time.
I can’t argue with that!
If we can just keep Winning, all will be well.
“573 deaths have been certified as “disaster-related” by 13 municipalities affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties
“In Japan, the National Police Agency has confirmed 15,894 deaths, 6,156 injured, and 2,546 people missing across twenty prefectures. In addition, some three thousands extra death have been identified as “earthquake-related death”, bringing the total number of death caused by the disaster to 19,575 as of 2017 September.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami
2.93% Nuc;ear related deaths.
Context is everything.
For comparison:
“An estimated 88,000 people (approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women) die from alcohol-related causes annually, making alcohol the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States. The first is tobacco, and the second is poor diet and physical inactivity.
In 2014, alcohol-impaired driving fatalities accounted for 9,967 deaths (31 percent of overall driving fatalities).”
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics
“Chicago marked 2016 as the deadliest year in nearly two decades, data released by the Chicago Police Department shows. The city saw a surge in gun violence in 2016: 762 murders, 3,550 shooting incidents, and 4,331 shooting victims, according to a statement released by the department on Sunday.”
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/01/us/chicago-murders-2016/index.html
Yeah, you sure do want to be the all silencing know it all. I didn’t — you project. You couldn’t find a real witch if we put you in En-dor.
Context is a lie controlled by the nuke industry and the governments that protect them. I don’t suppose you’re interested in the suppressed levels of medical problems (horrific) that doctors are forbidden by law to reveal, citizens are forbidden by law to report. So how about the mass die-offs in the ocean and on the shores resulting from Fukushima. Wait...wait...the gov provides you with cover so you can deny ALL that and just whine for more nuke plants and sneer at those who know there are 3 nuclear cores washing into the atmosphere and ocean and will continue to do so unchecked the rest of our lives.
“Yeah, you sure do want to be the all silencing know it all.”
No. Just asking you to do your homework before mouthing off.
“So how about the mass die-offs in the ocean and on the shores resulting from Fukushima.”
How about it? You seem to be the only one with knowledge of this!
“That is what doomed WPPSS. “
What doomed WPPSS was five guys trying to build plants when they had little experience in major projects.
“The one-off design approach of each plant ever built in the US is the major culprit. “
Please ...
If their were two sets of twins how could there be 5 different designs?
$12.2 billion in costs for its 45.7 percent share of the project?? !!
It is just a turbine run by steam using water heated by atoms.
“those two plants were only several months from the same phase of construction as their twins in less than half the time.”
WPPSS 3 was at 73% and 5 at 16% complete when the projects were halted.
My point exactly. You take inexperienced people and a fledgling big money nuclear technology industry and they bought into the multiple design concept using other people’s money.
You have personal experience on WPPSS projects?
Yes.
I was a pipefitter-welder on Plants 1,2 and 4.
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