The first of two new nuclear units at Plant Vogtle won’t start producing electricity until November 2016 at the earliest, Georgia Power said Friday.
That six-month schedule delay has caused the projected cost of the utility’s share of the project to tick upward 1 percent to $6.2 billion, the utility said. Worker training, increased project oversight and stiffer regulatory requirements are chief reasons behind the delay, tacking on six months’ worth of additional labor costs, the company said.
“We’ve made this decision to increase our level of oversight,” said Buzz Miller, executive vice president of nuclear development for Georgia Power and its sister company, Southern Nuclear. “There are not wild construction overruns.”
The increase will do nothing to customer bills for now. Georgia Power said it would not ask state utility regulators for permission to increase the approved $6.1 billion cost of the project at this time.
The Georgia Public Service Commission has reviewed Plant Vogtle’s cost and schedule information every six months in reports that have contained mostly redacted information. Georgia Power and its vendors said this information was proprietary and used the state’s “trade secret” laws to keep it from the public.
Friday’s report covers the first six months of 2012. Nothing in the report was redacted, giving the public details into cost and schedule changes at the site for the first time.
Projected cost increases include additional security and cybersecurity as required by federal nuclear regulators and more space to train workers, the report said.
Additional cost increases also could stem from two high-profile disputes between Georgia Power and the group of municipal and cooperative utilities building the plant and the project’s two main contractors, Westinghouse and the Shaw Group.
The first dispute is over who should pay for additional excavation work at the site. In the report, Georgia Power said its share of the payment is $36 million, but the contractors are asking for an additional $27 million from the utility. Two lawsuits over this issue are pending in federal court.
The second dispute is over who should pay for more than $900 million in delays from getting the nuclear reactor design approved. According to the report, Shaw and Westinghouse argue the delays are the fault of federal regulators and so they should not have to cover those costs. The vendors are asking for $425 million from Georgia Power.
But the utility leans on the private contract between the project’s owners and vendors. The contract says getting the reactor design approved was the vendor’s responsibility.
Miller told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the contract is what will keep customer bills from rising sharply in regards to Plant Vogtle.
“Our customers are very protected by this contract,” he said.
The AJC reported in June how information on construction costs was being withheld from the public version of documents released. The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, which has opposed the project, and the consumer group Georgia Watch had issued calls for more information to be made public.
Company officials said the article and the questions from consumer groups and shareholders were reasons behind not redacting information in the public version of the latest report.
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