2023-08-01 14:57:10
August 01, 2023 Today at 4:56 PM
Reactor 3 at the Vogtle, Georgia, plant was commissioned on Monday. It’s a first for 33 years in the United States, but probably also the last of its kind.
The first of two new reactors built at the Vogtle, Georgia nuclear power plant in the southeastern United States entered commercial operation on Monday, Georgia Power announced Monday. A commissioning which takes place seven years after the delivery date initially envisaged, and with significant budget overruns.
The cost of making the units 3 and 4the latter being expected in early 2024, reached more than 30 billion dollars, according to an estimate by the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia. This is more than double the budget announced when the project was launched in 2009, namely 14 billion dollars.
A director of the Georgia state regulator estimated that in the end, a typical household will have paid an additional $926 for this project.
These cost overruns had pushed the nuclear giant Westinghouse to file for bankruptcy in 2017. Westinghouse has since withdrawn from the project, and was taken over by the investment fund Brookfield Business Partners.
Soaring costs will also have an impact on consumer bills: the average household bill will increase by $14.10 per month for years to come, and a director of the Georgia state regulator has estimated that in the end, a typical household will have paid $926 extra for this project.
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A last one, too?
Vogtle units 3 and 4 are the first new reactor projects approved by US authorities since 1979 and the Three Mile Island Generating Station accident. Since 1990, only two other reactors were commissionedthose of Watts Bar in 1996 and 2016, but these were reactors whose construction began in 1973before being suspended for more than two decades.
The construction of units 2 and 3 of the power plant Virgil SummerSouth Carolina, was discontinued in 2017even though $9 billion had already been invested in it.
All these reactors are AP1000reactors of a new type with which Westinghouse dreamed of revolutionizing the industry. Their simplified modular design was to be easier to build and operate, and to sell by the dozen at an attractive price.
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Modular reactors, the nuclear option… after the end of nuclear power?
But besides the difficulties in going from the drawing board to a working reactorl, the revival of American interest in nuclear power was curbed by the catastrophe of Fukushima then by the falling gas prices.
After these setbacks, manufacturers interested in new nuclear power in the United States are now betting on SMR (small modular reactors)much smaller, supposed to be less expensive, less time-consuming to build and safer than current models.
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