A reactor at a nuclear power plant in Georgia, in the southeastern United States, was commissioned on Monday. This is the first time in seven years that the country has had no more conventional reactor projects, which have been replaced by small reactors.
Vogtle, first power plant approved since 1979: Unit 3 operational after years of waiting
Unit 3 at the Vogtle site near Waynesboro in eastern Georgia has been connected to the power grid. This unit will be able to cover the needs of around 500,000 homes and businesses, according to a press release issued by Georgia Power on Monday. Commissioning takes place seven years after the initially planned delivery date. Units 3 and 4 are scheduled for completion in late 2023 or early 2024. According to an estimate by the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (MEAP), it is worth more than $30 billion.
This is more than double the $14 billion budget announced when the project was launched. In 2017, cost overruns forced nuclear giant Westinghouse, a subsidiary of Japan’s Toshiba, into bankruptcy, and the company withdrew from the Vogtle project. Once unit 4 is commissioned, Vogtle will be the most powerful power plant in the United States.
Vogtle units 3 and 4 were the first new reactor projects to be approved by the US authorities since 1979 and the Three Mile Island incident, the most serious in US nuclear history. The last unit commissioned before Vogtle Unit 3 was Unit 2 at the Watts Bar power plant in Tennessee in 2016.
New direction: Manufacturers turn to small SMR reactors in the U.S.
But this was a reactor whose construction had begun in 1973. Work was suspended for more than two decades, then continued. Since 1990, only three reactors have been commissioned in the United States. The two Watts Bar units in 1996 and 2016, and Vogtle unit 3 on Monday. No other conventional reactor project is currently underway. Construction of units 2 and 3 at the Virgil Summer power plant in South Carolina was abandoned in 2017. Although $9 billion has already been invested.
Manufacturers have now turned their attention to new-generation small modular reactors (SMRs). These models, none of which have yet been put into service, are supposed to be less expensive. They take less time to build and are considered safer than conventional power plants.
