Nuclear - Interesting Article

[Wolverine]

Interesting Forbes article on nuclear development, with the Southeast blazing the way (sorry Texas).

Southern Co's Nuclear Game Plan

It could be the start of a much bigger round of nuclear construction in the U.S.--if the controlling owner of the site, Southern Co., can pull this off. "Success here is the linchpin for the nuclear industry in this country," says Joseph (Buzz) Miller, executive vice president for nuclear development for Southern.
The failures of the last round of U.S. nuclear building were legion. Cost overruns and construction delays sent utilities into bankruptcy, led to the cancelation of 63 planned reactors and set back governments and ratepayers billions of dollars. A 1985 article in FORBES (Feb. 11) made the case that the U.S. nuclear power program was the largest managerial disaster in business history. When the Tennessee Valley Authority ( TVC - news - people )'s Watts Bar reactor powered up in 1996 after 23 years of construction, it seemed to mark the end of the nuclear age.

Now Southern Co. is trying to revive it with a pair of reactors set to come online in 2016 and 2017 next to two older reactors at its Vogtle power station, 30 miles south of Augusta. At $31 billion, Southern, based in Atlanta, is the biggest utility in the country by market value. It runs 73 fossil and hydro plants along with six nuclear reactors at three sites. The company earned $1.6 billion in 2009 on $15.7 billion in revenues and has the reputation on Wall Street as one of the best-managed utilities. If someone's going to build a nuke, it probably should be Southern.

Georgia regulators have endorsed the project and are even allowing the company to charge ratepayers for financing costs before the reactors are up and running. In February the Department of Energy awarded Southern an $8.3 billion loan guarantee, the only one offered so far out of $18.5 billion set aside by Congress for new nuclear reactors.

This time, say reactor vendors and big engineering and construction firms hoping to do the building, things will be different. No construction delays, no cost overruns, no bankruptcies. "We went through a long, lean period in nuclear," says Aris Candris, chief executive of Westinghouse, the Toshiba ( TOSBF.PK - news - people )-owned company supplying the reactor design for Southern as well as 12 of the 20 other new projects planned in the U.S. "That gave us plenty of time to lock arms as an industry and decide next time we were going to do it right."

 

[Supe]

As someone on the "inside" of all four new reactors going up in the southeast, I can't help but laugh at the "no delays, no cost overruns" part.

A) Vogtle craft is 100% union.

B) They're already behind schedule, mostly due to delays out of the module shops.

Jenkinsville (SCE&G) is on target so far, but there are going to be delays there, too. As it is, we're running around like chickens with our heads cut off to meet deadlines already, hence my diminished presence on EB.com lately.

FYI, the South Texas nuclear project was originally scheduled along the same time frame as Vogtle and VC Summer, but permitting has been slower for the BWR design, and rumor has it that they are giving Fluor the boot and moving to a different contractor, which has also created delays.