The 2 new Vogtle nuclear reactors will mean do or die for the nuclear industry

Analysis: U.S. nuclear industry’s fate rests with Southern Co By Scott DiSavino and Eileen O’Grady NEW YORK/HOUSTON Feb 16, 2012 (Reuters) – The future of U.S. nuclear power rests squarely on the shoulders of Atlanta-based Southern Co, which will lead the industry’s effort to prove the concept of new reactor construction after a 30-year hiatus.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on February 9 voted 4-1
to issue Southern a permit to build and operate two units at its
existing Vogtle plant in eastern Georgia. These were the first U.S.
permits issued since 1978, a year before the partial meltdown at the
Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania cast a pall over the industry
and halted plans for dozens of plants.

Government officials and Wall Street financiers will watch Southern
closely for evidence that utilities can maneuver through a complex
construction schedule and avoid cost overruns like those that plagued
the last wave of U.S. reactor building in the 1970s and 1980s. One
early challenge — a lawsuit by anti-nuclear power groups — is
expected on Thursday…..
Twelve public interest groups on Thursday are expected to file suit
challenging the Vogtle permit on grounds that the NRC has not heeded
lessons from Japan’s Fukushima accident last year, the worst since the
Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986.

Any delay caused by legal challenges could result in cost overruns
totaling millions or even billions of dollars. Southern and partners
have already spent more than $4 billion on major components at the
Vogtle site and await final approval of an $8.3 billion federal loan
guarantee.

“The license may be granted, but these reactors are far from a done
deal,” said Damon Moglen at Friends of the Earth, one of the
environmental groups joining the legal challenge. “As in the past,
expect delays and cost overruns.”

Southern will try to avoid a replay of the delays and ballooning costs
that beset the two existing reactors at Vogtle when they were built.
Original estimates put those costs at $660 million when proposed in
the early 1970s. But they ended up costing more than $8 billion by the
time they entered service in the late 1980s. Much of the increase was
due to required safety upgrades after the Three Mile Island
accident……
Even the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear trade group, expects
only a handful of new reactors to enter service by 2020, including the
two at Vogtle and another two AP1000s at power company Scana Corp’s
Summer plant in South Carolina, which is expected to get an NRC
license later this year. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/16/us-utilities-southern-nuclear-idUSTRE81F2AX20120216