Part One of Two Parts
I have often mentioned in my blogs that nuclear power plant projects have serious problems meeting budget estimates and construction schedules. The U.S. has been building nuclear power reactors for sixty years and not one of the projects ever met their original budget and schedule. For thirty years no new nuclear power plants were constructed in the U.S. Then, about ten years ago, work began on projects to build new power reactors in Georgia and South Carolina.
After five years of effort, Southern Company and Georgia Power utilities contracted in 2012 with Westinghouse Electric Company LLC for two new AP1000 power reactors to be installed at the Vogtle plant in Georgia. The two new reactors were supposed to start producing power in 2016 and 2017.
It was obvious that restarting nuclear power reactor construction after a thirty year hiatus was not going to be easy. Southern Company, Georgia Power and Westinghouse and were confident that they had sufficient expertise to deal with all the challenges they would face. But not only were they restarting a long dormant industry they were also working with a new reactor design. The plan was for Westinghouse and the Stone & Webster unit of the Shaw Group to build small, prefabricated components at a factory. The components would then be shipped to and assembled at the Vogtle site. The Southern Company’s nuclear unit and Georgia Power would oversee and manage the contractors. The then executive vice president of Southern Company testified in a hearing before the Georgia utility regulators in 2008, "We'll use very, very experienced people who actually have done the work before. And they'll know that schedule and the budget issues coming up."
At the very beginning of the project, design changes delayed the issuance of the construction license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by four months. Westinghouse and Georgia Power were confident that they would be able to make up the lost four months during the project but it never happened.
Problems plagued the project from the start. Southern Company’s nuclear unit and Geogia Power added more and more supervisors to oversee the complex work on the reactors. Westinghouse was over optimistic about the design schedule and there was a shortage of managers with experience. There were substandard components from suppliers and critical documents went missing. Vendors had to be educated on the very strict nuclear quality standards and oversight processes. There were not enough qualified welders and not enough instructors to train more.
Contractors complained that Southern Company’s nuclear unit and Geogia Power micromanaged the project and interfered with their work. Commercial disputes piled up. Consultant Charles Hudson said in his report on the project, “This type of internal consortium commercial dispute on critical path module completion had potentially catastrophic consequences for Vogtle Units 3 and 4.”
An independent construction monitor at Vogtle reviewed some of the problems at a routine hearing in 2012. One of the things that he reported was that there a lot of missing documents and missing signatures on documents which resulted in a lot of delays. This was not an infrequent issue. The main vendors on the projects simply did not follow the rules for documentation and other quality assurance requirements.
In 2013, Chicago Bridge & Iron Company bought the Shaw Group and became a contractor for the Vogtle project.
Please read Part Two
