nuclear-news

Work suspended on proposed Stewart County nuclear plant

Georgia Power suspends work on proposed Stewart County nuclear plant, Atlanta Business Chronicle  Dave Williams  Mar 2, 2017,  Georgia Power Co. is suspending plans for a new nuclear power plant south of Columbus, Ga., the Atlanta-based utility announced in a letter to the state Public Service Commission (PSC).

The PSC voted last summer to authorize Georgia Power to spend up to $99 million to cover the early stages of the project in Stewart County through the second quarter of 2019.

But since then, Toshiba Corp. has announced that subsidiary Westinghouse Electric Co. – the chief contractor currently building nuclear plants in South Carolina and at Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle – will stop constructing nuclear reactors. Last month, Toshiba blamed a projected $6.3 billion write-down on losses from its U.S. nuclear operations.

In a letter dated March 1, a lawyer representing Georgia Power wrote that the work in Stewart County is being suspended because demand projections show there will be no need for new nuclear generation of electricity until outside the utility’s three-year planning process.

But critics of nuclear power blamed the decision to suspend the Stewart project on Toshiba’s financial meltdown.

“We appreciate that [Georgia Power parent] Southern Co. has pulled back on the Stewart County nuclear proposal, which was clearly a bad deal for the citizens of Georgia,” said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Tennessee-based Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. “[But] it’s outrageous that Southern Co. already has spent more than $50 million [in] ratepayer dollars on this proposal. … Southern Co. already has ratepayers paying too much for the over-budget and behind-schedule Vogtle nuclear units.”….http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2017/03/02/georgia-power-suspends-work-on-proposed-stewart.html

March 4, 2017 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA