The day before Southern Co. learns whether it will get the go-ahead to build the first newly approved nuclear reactors in 30 years, company executives sat in a crowded room of federal nuclear regulators telling them the $14 billion project is under strict management and oversight and will be built to the highest of standards.
Meanwhile, protesters against nuclear power chanted and sang outside the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Southeast headquarters in downtown Atlanta, saying not enough has been done to ensure that nuclear reactors are safe since the Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan 11 months ago.
Southern is trying to get permission to build twin 1,100-megawatt reactors at Plant Vogtle, joining the two that are already there and started producing electricity in the 1980s.
“The NRC has not taken appropriate safety measures for the people living in the shadow of Plant Vogtle,” said Courtney Hanson, Public Outreach Director for the Georgia Women’s Action for New Directions. The group is one of nine threatening to file a federal lawsuit forcing the utility to explain how the reactors’ cooling systems as well as the fuel storage pools will be upgraded to protect against earthquakes, flooding and prolonged loss of electric power to the site.
The NRC is expected to meet at noon today to decide whether to approve the critical license that Atlanta-based Southern and its subsidiary, Southern Nuclear, needs to start major construction at Vogtle.
A blessing from the commission means its staff then can issue what’s called a combined-operating license for the project, which would give Georgians more electricity from nuclear power.
Southern’s subsidiary and largest utility, Georgia Power, is responsible for $6.1 billion of the project, located in Burke County, southeast of Augusta.
The utility’s customers already are paying down the project’s financing costs through a fee that will increase to $8.74 a month by 2015. The fee will end once reactors start producing power in 2016 and 2017.
Southern also accepted roughly $8.3 billion in taxpayer-backed conditional federal loan guarantees, which the company can start using once its receives the construction license.
Georgia Power spokesman Mark Williams said the company couldn’t speculate on what would happen should the NRC not sign off on the project.
“I think we’re going to see what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says tomorrow and move from there,” Williams told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Wednesday’s meeting with NRC officials was a review of the project so far. Southern Nuclear officials emphasized the company’s tight oversight of the project, which is being built with a group of municipal and cooperative utilities, as well as The Shaw Group and Westinghouse and a host of subcontractors.
“Our leadership is aligned. We know what our responsibilities are, and we’re here to meet those responsibilities and objectives,” said Mark Rauckhorst, recently named vice president of construction for Vogtle Units 3 and 4.
Federal nuclear regulators have not issued a permit for a new reactor since 1978, the year before a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Increased regulation, skyrocketing construction costs and high interest rates all helped grind the industry to a halt after that.
For its part, the first two reactors that started producing electricity at Vogtle ran over budget by more than $8 billion and took 16 years to build.
In the past five years, nearly 30 reactors were slated to be built in this country at some point in this decade. More than half have been pulled back because of a lack of financial backing, diminished demand for electricity, a fear of increasing safety regulations and cheaper natural gas. And there remains no long-term national plan for handling nuclear waste.
