It’s been a long road getting Waynesboro-based Plant Vogtle’s Unit 3 and 4 reactors up and running – and the road looks to be only getting longer.
A recent SEC filing from Georgia Power and The Southern Company cites delays in performing necessary “hot functional tests” with Unit 3 have been the most recent cause for concern, those tests being delayed from March until later in April – for now, anyway.
The reason for those testing delays per the filing is “additional construction remediation work, primarily related to electrical commodity installations, necessary to ensure quality and design standards are met.”
The filing also states that “a delay is likely” regarding the projected target service date of November 2021 for Unit 3.
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And those delays won’t be cheap.
“Any schedule extension beyond November 2021 for Unit 3 is currently estimated to result in additional base capital costs for Georgia Power of approximately $25 million per month,” reads the SEC filing.
And this isn’t the first time construction at Vogtle has gone over-schedule and over-budget. When the first two natural draft cooling reactors – Unit 1 and Unit 2 – were being constructed in 1987 and 1989, respectively, the estimated cost for capital investors was $660 million dollars. The cost at the end of it all was an estimated $8.87 billion.
In 2012, constructions at Vogtle were at a standstill for nearly a year while paperwork was being processed. The plan was to build pre-fabricated sections of reactors off-site and ship them to their eventual homes.
However, the process wasn’t as smooth as intended, and the costs and time incurred by that plan brought production to a screeching halt. It was ultimately a $13 billion dollar miscue that bankrupted Westinghouse Electric Company, which was a subsidiary of Japan’s Toshiba Corporation.
Georgia Power and The Southern Company appear to have no qualms about pressing on ahead with Unit 3 and Unit 4’s construction no matter the cost.
Tyler Strong is the Business Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at tyler@theaugustapress.com
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