Photo courtesy of Georgia Power
Unit 4 at the Vogtle nuclear expansion project near Waynesboro, Ga., has safely reached initial criticality.
The second new nuclear unit at Plant Vogtle has entered commercial service, Georgia Power announced April 29, marking the end of the 15-year expansion of the nuclear power facility near Augusta, a project beset by years of delays and cost overruns.
The Vogtle units are the first new commercial reactors built from scratch in the United States in more than three decades, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted.
With the second unit now online, known as Unit 4, the two reactors combined will produce enough electricity to power 1 million homes, without adding heat-trapping carbon pollution to the atmosphere.
The first one, Unit 3, has been in service since last July, joining the original two Vogtle reactors, which have been producing electricity since the late 1980s.
The addition of the two new units makes Plant Vogtle the country's largest generator of carbon-free electricity, according to Georgia Power.
The latest Vogtle units were dogged by various problems, and ultimately reached completion roughly seven years later than initially forecast. Their total price tag also blew past the original cost estimate of $14 billion to around $35 billion. Most of Georgia Power's portion of those costs will continue to come out of the pockets of its customers.
In a statement, Georgia Power president and CEO Kim Greene praised the new unit's co-owners and regulators at the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC), who greenlit the project and repeatedly voted to continue construction, despite skyrocketing costs.
Georgia Power owns the largest share in the Vogtle expansion with 45.7 percent, followed by Oglethorpe Power, the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and Dalton Utilities.
"The new Vogtle units are a key piece of our strategy to meet the energy needs of our customers not only tomorrow, but 20 years from now," Greene said.
In a statement, Mike Smith, Oglethorpe Power's president and CEO, called the project's completion the "culmination of a remarkable journey." The utility company and its partners serve 38 not-for-profit electric membership corporations that provide electricity to more than 4.4 million people in the Peach State.
"We celebrate not only the completion of this important emission-free resource, but also the historic achievement it represents as the first advanced commercial nuclear project in the nation in more than three decades," Smith added.
Expansion's High Costs to Be Passed to Ratepayers
Even before the first new unit produced any electricity, the average Georgia Power residential customer had already paid about $1,000 over the last decade-plus in monthly bill fees to cover the project's financing, the Atlanta newspaper reported.
Late last year, state regulators voted to approve a deal to pass $7.56 billion of Vogtle's construction costs on to the company's ratepayers. Georgia Power and shareholders of its parent, Southern Company, will absorb the remaining $2.63 billion of the project's construction costs.
As a result, the average residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a month will see a cumulative increase of $14.38 in their monthly bills. Part of that increase — about $5.42 — kicked in last year after Unit 3 entered service.
Now that Unit 4 is online, the rest — about $9 — will show up on customer bills in May.
Georgia Power May Look to Add More Nuclear Facilities
With the new units completed, the expanded Vogtle plant will support 800 permanent jobs. At its peak, the reactors' construction brought 9,000 workers to rural Waynesboro, 30 mi. south of Augusta.
Georgia Power, the federal government, and the nuclear industry had hoped that the completion of the Vogtle reactors and their newly trained workforce would provide momentum for nuclear power in other parts of the United States.
So far, though, that has not happened.
Currently, there are no other commercial nuclear plants under construction in the United States, or any signed orders to build new ones.
Still, as energy-hungry data centers proliferate and electricity demands grow, many experts consider nuclear expansion a vital tool for fighting climate change and building American energy independence.
In an interview with the Journal-Constitution April 29, Greene left the door open to the possibility that Georgia Power could seek to add even more nuclear power to its own system in the future. The company will submit its next long-range energy plan to the PSC early next year, and she said the utility is still weighing its options.
"We are going to consider all the options and look at the best long-term needs for our state and our customers," Greene added.
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