The Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generation Plant is located near Waynesboro, Georgia on the Savannah River. The plant has two one thousand two hundred megawatt Westinghouse pressurized water reactors. Unit 1 was completed in 1987 and Unit Two was completed in 1989. Both reactors were licensed for forty years. Forty six percent of Vogtle is owned by Georgia Power, thirty percent by Oglethorpe Power Corporation, and twenty three percent is owned by the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia. Southern Nuclear built the plant and operates it. During construction, the cost of the plant jumped from six hundred sixty million dollars to almost nine billion dollars. In 2009, Unit 1 was relicensed until 2047 and Unit Two was relicensed until 2049.
The population in the NRC plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of ten miles around the plant contains about six thousand people. The NRC ingestion pathway zone with a radius of fifty miles around the plant contains about seven hundred and twenty seven thousand people. The NRC estimates that there is a extremely low risk of an earthquake that could damage the plant. The plant is vulnerable to hurricanes coming in from the Atlantic Ocean.
In 1990, a truck backed into a column supporting the lines that supplied power to a reserve transformer for Unit One. Planned maintenance which had removed some backup systems from service and equipment failure which prevented other backup systems from functioning were part of a complicated chain reaction which cut the power to the residual heat removal pump which was cooling Unit One. Unit One was offline at the time for refueling. A Site Area Emergency (SAE) which was mandatory in such circumstances was declared. After aboOne rose from ninety degrees to one hundred thirty six degrees, an emergency generator which bypassed the backup systems was brought online manually and the SAE was cancelled. Non-vital power was available at all times but poor design prevented the easy transfer of power to vital systems. This problem has since been remedied with design changes.
In 2006, Southern Nuclear applied for a permit to build two new reactors at the Vogtle site. A contract was signed for the construction of the new reactors in 2008, the first such contract since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979. In 2009, the NRC issued an Early Site Permit and a Limited Construction Permit. In 2010, President Obama announced that the U.S. Government would provide loan guarantees for about eight billion dollars for the project. The cost of construction of the two reactors is estimated to be around fourteen billion dollars. The NRC issued full approval of construction of the two reactors in 2012. A group of environmental groups filed a lawsuit to halt construction of the plant which was rejected by the Washington D.C. Appeals Court. Construction began in 2013 with the new Unit Three expected to start operations in 2016 and the new Unit Four to start operating in 2017.
Hopefully, the design problems and failing equipment will be absent from the new reactors. Unfortunately, the rising costs are not. The new reactors are already billions of dollars over their original estimated cost and cost overruns will probably continue. Money has been collected up front from current customers which will not be recoverable even if the reactors are never completed. And, if the reactors are completed, they may not be able to compete in the future energy market. A bill in the Georgia legislature that would limit company profits in cases of huge cost overruns has been killed in subcommittee.
