Posted on 12/18/2017 3:35:50 AM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
The Georgia Public Service Commission on Thursday is set to decide the fate of Plant Vogtle, the only nuclear reactor under construction in the U.S., which is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
At Thursday’s hearing, a commission made of five elected officials, all Republicans, will vote on whether to permit Georgia Power’s new plan for the project, which includes an updated cost projection and construction timeline, or to cancel it.
Georgia Power is estimating $12.2 billion in costs for its 45.7 percent share of the project, and for the reactors to be producing electricity by 2021 or 2022.
This cost estimate is nearly double the company’s original projection, and the timeline is five years behind schedule. The cost of the project for Georgia Power and its co-owners exceeds $20 billion.
The commission's decision will come days after the embattled nuclear industry learned that House and Senate Republicans as part of a tax reform package would not grant the extension of a key tax credit for new nuclear production that could have benefited the Southern Co. plant.
Jeremy Harrell, policy director of Clear Path Action, a group that advocates for clean energy sources such as nuclear power, which has zero greenhouse gas emissions, said extending the tax credit could have sent a strong signal to Georgia’s regulators.
“Southern Co. has said this is essential for projecting financing of Vogtle,” Harrell told the Washington Examiner. “It's not an ideal situation.”
Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Co., has pitched Plant Vogtle since 2009 as a way to revive the U.S. nuclear industry to supplement an aging fleet, promising that two reactors planned for the site would give the state emission-free electricity for as long as 80 years.
Today, 60 percent of the carbon-free energy produced in the U.S. comes from the nation's existing 99 nuclear power plants. Nearly 20 percent of the nation’s electricity is provided by nuclear.
But in March, Westinghouse, the lead contractor on the project that designed the reactors, went bankrupt, imperiling the future of the plant.
In July, South Carolina utilities announced it would cancel a separate plan for two nuclear reactors in the state because of cost overruns after Westinghouse, also the reactor's designer for that project, went bankrupt. But Georgia Power pledged to press ahead with Plant Vogtle, a boon to advocates of nuclear power who stress its zero-emissions status and consider nuclear to be more reliable than wind and solar energy.
Supporters of the project are downplaying the impact of the lost nuclear production tax credit in the final GOP tax bill.
Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., a prominent Vogtle booster, told the Washington Examiner he expects Congress will extend the tax incentive later this year or early next as part of a package of “tax extenders” for expiring credits. Under current law, developers can receive the credit only if the reactors become active by the end of 2020. That would not meet Vogtle’s extended timeline, so Georgia Power is looking for an extension.
“I am committed to doing whatever I can to ensure that the Plant Vogtle project stays on track for completion to strengthen America’s energy security and to preserve the more than 6,000 Georgia jobs created by this project,” Isakson said. “I have been actively discussing this matter with constituent stakeholders as well as Senate and House leadership, and we are working on a path forward to get a nuclear tax credit extension passed this year or early next year.”
Georgia Power has other important backers. The Energy Department in September offered an additional loan guarantee of up to $3.7 billion to the companies building Vogtle. The department had already guaranteed $8.3 billion in loans to the companies.
The public power companies building the plant have asked the Public Service Commission to allow Georgia Power to recoup Vogtle's new costs from customers. But commission staff filed a document this month arguing that customers would incur too high of a cost to justify the economics of the project.
"Assuming the project is completed, ratepayers would incur significantly higher revenue requirements and a reduced economic benefit while the company's profits would increase," wrote PSC staff consultants Phil Hayet and Lane Kollen, and Tom Newsome, the PSC staff's utilities finance director.
Kurt Ebersbach, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center in Atlanta, who is advocating the commission oppose the plan, said the company’s expectations are unfair to ratepayers.
“It’s a very lopsided, heavy-handed proposal for Georgia Power to say we want the commission to approve a revised cost schedule and additional years of delay, in addition to assurances we will recover every last penny from customers,” Ebersbach told the Washington Examiner. “It’s unreasonable.”
John Kraft, a Georgia Power spokesman, insists the benefits of the project will outweigh costs.
“We remain confident that the unified recommendation to move forward with construction represents the best choice for customers while preserving the benefits of a new carbon-free energy source for our state,” Kraft told the Washington Examiner.
A fitting personal motto for one dimensional you. Except mere sleep will not suffice.
“One dimensional”
LOL!
Hawaii? Hawaii said that 50% of sampled fish were contaminated. Your choice.
LOL! 100% of people are contaminated!
Sham. US and all other govs that prop up nuke plants lie through their teeth. Downwinders? Yup the gov waited until most died off and then admitted fault. Nuke workers? Yup the gov sued them if they filed medical claims for nuke induced illness until about 2000 when law passed stopping them from doing it. Above ground testing - yes they eventually get around to admitting they underreported by orders of magnitude. Nuke contamination left and right, nuke management incompetence resulting to harm to public. Lack of professional standards so you get nuke engineers who don’t understand dosimetry. Government denies it all - and that has been working for them for years. Doesn’t matter which government, Japan, France, US, Russia - all of them polluting, damaging human health and HAPPY TO LIE about it. HAPPY in the sociopathic sense. US used to take insults for being the insurer so what - shell game and now they still lie? Private insurance upon which they will never collect or wait a good 40 years and then settle, like they did with Downwinders.
Fukushima released far more radiation than they admitted but why tell the truth when lying has been working so well since the start of the nuclear age.
hah ahahahahah! Radioactive waste spread by industrial incompetence is HILARIOUS!!! AHAHAHAHAH!
You are so full of crap. The newsies we’re getting themselves with glee when Fukushima happened and kept promising the end of the world.
So now your conspiracy theory is that they are all pro nuke? You need a straight jacket and a rubber room.
Yeah, like telling the sea that it is wet.
Merely that libbies play up both sides depending on the trend of the moment.
Explains why insanity reaches to you?
Liberals praise nukes about as often as they praise conservative republicans: only when it serves some other nefarious purpose and to provide anecdotal evidence they aren’t completely one sided.
There is no way they would pass on a juicy anti-nuke story.
You have been drinking too much radioactive koolaid.
You don’t believe water is wet.
There is so much information out there that backs me up and it’s growing day by day and has been since 2011. I watch these reports roll out - damage to human and animal health, plants etc. It’s disappointing that there are so many who find this funny and treat lying about it like a sporting event.
The gov props up the damaging nuke industry, the MSM follows suit because the extent of the distribution of radioactive waste over the population has always been treated like a matter of national security. That’s because people would move away from the regions contaminated. IN Russia they flat out forbid people to move out contaminated zones (they moved out of the heaviest) so many were forced to raise their families amid chronic illness/leukemia/birth defects. In Japan the government doesn’t want to pay people for destroying their homes and livelihoods and health with radioactive waste, and the radiation did blanket Tokyo and, well all of the island, so they lie and say it’s harmless. So people who can’t afford to walk away from jobs and homes have to live in it. In the US, they flat out like and people tend to believe them. With Fukushima no college/university (government funded) would agree to test soil samples and you can still hear scientists making non-scientific excuses (lying) about contaminated fish from the pacific. I’ve read so much research over the years (Chernobyl through FUkushima) on this you’re wasting my time with standard issue pro nuke trash.
Whatever fumes you are inhaling to cause these hallucinations are a lot worse for you than nuclear power.
So every time Tepco admits to lying, every time a new report documenting the continuing contamination and its effects is released is really just hallucination. That’s the best you can come up with? It’s embarrassing to be you, isn’t it?
You have been drinking too much radioactive koolaid.
ah....troll repetition. The pro nuke apologist is really limited to claiming “hallucination” and repetition.
You have been drinking too much radioactive koolaid.
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