Future of American nuclear industry hangs on Vogtle new nuclear plant construction

Nuclear power could become a bypassed technology — like moon landings, Polaroid photos and cassette tapes……..

The reason that utilities choose nuclear plants, is that they can collect profits on their investments. In Georgia they can do so even before the plant is finished.

Nuclear Power’s Future May Hinge on Georgia Project NYT, By MATTHEW L. WALD June 11, 2013WAYNESBORO, Ga. — The two nuclear reactors rising out of the red Georgia clay here, twin behemoths of concrete and steel, make up one of the largest construction projects in the United States and represent a giant bet that their cost – in the range of $14 billion – will be cheaper than alternatives like natural gas. But something else is at stake with the reactors called Vogtle 3 and 4: the future of the American nuclear industry itself.

The Alvin W. Vogtle nuclear power plant near Augusta is using a new plant design, a new construction method and a new system of nuclear regulation for what the industry says is a faster, better and cheaper system that will lead the way for a new generation of reactors.

Until recently, a new reactor construction project had not been started in the United States for 30 years, and now Vogtle and a similar project in South Carolina, V.C. Summer 2 and 3, are supposed to provide the answer to nuclear power’s great questions: What does a new reactor cost? With the price of natural gas near historic lows, can it even be worthwhile?

As the current generation of reactors moves toward retirement, the two projects may be the industry’s last best hope….. if they cannot be built roughly on time and on budget, then nuclear power will have trouble in the era of plentiful natural gas and emerging technologies like wind. Nuclear power could become a bypassed technology — like moon landings, Polaroid photos and cassette tapes……..

with construction now roughly one-third complete, it is clear that much is not going as planned, and that the schedule — which is closely linked to cost because of growing interest expense on the incomplete asset — has slipped by at least 14 months and possibly more….. the company that was supposed to be making prefabricated parts like clockwork, from a factory in Lake Charles, La., was shipping them with some parts missing or without required paperwork. Southern built a cavernous “module assembly building,” 120 feet high and 300 feet long, where the parts were supposed to be welded together, largely by robots, into segments weighing thousands of tons. But shipments stopped last August and are still arriving too slowly.

The builders “kind of stumbled,” said William Jacobs, a longtime nuclear engineer hired by the Georgia Public Service Commission to monitor construction. Mr. Jacobs said it remained to be seen whether modular construction would actually save time…… The modules are just one problem. In the six-foot-thick basement of the plant, contractors painstakingly wove 1,200 tons of steel reinforcing bar together but connected the bars differently from the way the design specified. In the 1980s it would have made no difference, but today it requires a license amendment — a delay of seven and a half months.

Mr. Jacobs, the construction monitor, said delays could add hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost…… Mark Cooper, an economic analyst affiliated with the Vermont Law School Institute for Energy and the Environment, predicted in a study in March that over their lifetimes, Vogtle 3 and 4 would cost $10 billion more than the alternatives. The reason that utilities choose nuclear plants, he argued, is that they can collect profits on their investments. In Georgia they can do so even before the plant is finished….. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/business/energy-environment/nuclear-powers-future-may-hinge-on-georgia-project.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0