ATLANTA– The second of two new nuclear reactors in Georgia has gone into commercial operation, capping a project that cost billions more and took years longer than originally planned.
Georgia Power Co. and fellow owners announced the milestone Monday for Plant Vogtle’s Unit 4, which joins an earlier new reactor southeast of Augusta in splitting atoms to make carbon-free electricity.
Unit 3 began commercial operation last summer, joining two older reactors that have been at the site for decades. They are the first two nuclear reactors built in the United States in decades.
The new Vogtle reactors are currently expected to cost Georgia Power and three other owners $31 billion, according to calculations by The Associated Press. Add in the $3.7 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid Vogtle owners to walk away from construction, and the total approaches $35 billion.
Electricity customers in Georgia have already paid billions for what may be the most expensive power plant ever built. The reactors were originally expected to cost $14 billion and be completed in 2017.
Utility companies and their political supporters on Monday cheered the plant’s completion. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said he was “grateful for this historic achievement by Georgia Power and its partners.” Chris Womack, CEO of Atlanta-based Southern Co., which owns Georgia Power, argues that Vogtle will make the state’s electric grid more reliable and resilient and help the utility achieve its goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 to push.
“These new Vogtle units will not only support the economy within our communities now and into the future, they demonstrate our global nuclear leadership,” Womack said in a statement.
Each of the two new reactors could power 500,000 homes and businesses without releasing carbon.
Even some of Vogtle’s opponents have said the United States cannot achieve carbon-free electricity without nuclear power. But Georgia Power, like other utilities, plans to generate more fossil fuels in the coming years, and says demand is surging. That demand, driven by computer data centers, is being felt by multiple utilities across the country.
Calculations show that Vogtle’s electricity will never be cheaper than other sources its owners could have chosen, even after the federal government lowered borrowing costs by guaranteeing the repayment of $12 billion in loans.
“Hopefully the two new units at Plant Vogtle, despite being seven years late and billions over budget, will finally perform well for the next 80 years to justify the excessive costs,” said Liz Coyle, executive director of Georgia Watch , a consumer organization. group that fought to limit interest rate increases.
In Georgia, almost every electric customer will pay for Vogtle. Georgia Power owns 45.7% of the reactors. Smaller shares are owned by Oglethorpe Power Corp., which supplies electricity to member-owned cooperatives, the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and the city of Dalton. Utilities in Jacksonville, Florida, as well as the Florida Panhandle and parts of Alabama, have also contracted to buy Vogtle’s power.
Regulators in December approved an additional 6% rate increase for Georgia Power’s 2.7 million customers to pay $7.56 billion in remaining costs at Vogtle, with the company absorbing $2.6 billion in costs. This is expected to cost the average residential customer an additional $8.97 per month in May, on top of the $5.42 increase that came into effect when Unit 3 went into service.
Even as government officials and some utilities use nuclear power to alleviate climate change, Vogtle’s costs could deter utilities from using nuclear power. U.S. utilities have heeded Vogtle’s missteps and shelved plans for 24 other reactors proposed between 2007 and 2009. Two half-completed reactors in South Carolina were abandoned. But Westinghouse is marketing the reactor design abroad. China has said it will build more reactors using the design, while Bulgaria, Poland and Ukraine also say they plan to build nuclear power plants using the Westinghouse reactor.