Lessons Learned - Difficulties in Bringing New Units Online at Vogtle Could Help Future Nuclear Projects

There is a lot of talk about the best way to meet the expected increases in U.S. power demand, driven by manufacturing growth and the rapid development of large-scale data centers, which has sparked renewed interest in nuclear power. The most recent reactors to come online were Units 3 and 4 at Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear power station, but they came in well over budget and far behind schedule. Still, the startup of those units is a significant milestone as they are the first new reactors to come online in the U.S. since 2016. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss the lessons learned from the Vogtle project and what they might mean for future nuclear development. 

Interest in reviving nuclear power has increased in recent years despite the numerous challenges and cost overruns that plagued the Vogtle project (more on those in a bit), including efforts to restart shuttered plants like the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Michigan (see Coming Back to Life). Other reactors have successfully restarted after stretches of inactivity but Palisades was being decommissioned and no longer has its operating license. Because of that it faces a complicated — and unprecedented — path forward, helped in large part by a $1.52 billion loan guarantee recently finalized by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) but potentially hindered by widespread tube cracking found during inspections of the plant’s two steam generators. More recently, we documented plans to restart Unit 1 at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania after plant owner Constellation Energy and Microsoft agreed to terms on a 20-year power-purchase agreement (PPA). The DOE wants to increase the amount of nuclear power to help reach net-zero emissions goals but there are no new reactors under construction in the U.S. The DOE maintains the situation can change, using the lessons learned at Vogtle.

Let’s start with some background. The Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant — known as Plant Vogtle — is based in Burke County, GA, a little southeast of Augusta, and is named after former Alabama Power and Southern Company board chairman Alvin Vogtle. (Southern Company is the parent company of Georgia Power, which owns 45.7% of the plant and serves as the operator.) Plans for the nuclear plant were given the green light in 1971 and construction of Units 1 and 2 began in 1976. Unit 1 began operating 11 years later in 1987, followed by Unit 2 in 1989. Both units are Westinghouse four-loop pressurized water reactors (PWRs), each boasting a net generating capacity of about 1,215 megawatts (MW). They’ve been given extended licenses, with Unit 1 licensed to operate until 2047 and Unit 2 until 2049. (A PWR, the most common reactor design in operation, uses uranium pellets to heat water through fission. The high-pressure hot water is used to boil water in the steam generators and produce steam, which then spins large turbines that drive electric generators to produce electricity.)