In The News

Originally Published in 1226 On Your Side.

WAYNESBORO, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - Georgia Power declared Monday that Plant Vogtle Unit 4 has entered commercial operation and is now serving customers.

The new unit can produce enough electricity to power an estimated 500,000 homes and businesses, and follows Vogtle Unit 3 going into commercial operation on July 31, 2023.

With all four units now in operation, Plant Vogtle is expected to produce more than 30 million megawatt hours of electricity each year.

“It’s an exciting time to be a Georgian as our state continues to grow and thrive, with new demand for more clean energy each year,” said Kim Greene, chairman, president and CEO of Georgia Power

Rep. Rick Allen, R-Augusta, congratulated Georgia Power on the development.

“This historic achievement has been years in the making and proves that America can still do big things,” he said. “I am proud that Georgia’s 12th District is leading America’s nuclear energy future.”

Georgia Gov Brian Kemp proclaimed he was “thankful for this historic achievement by Georgia Power and its partners.”

Chris Womack, CEO of Atlanta-based Southern Co., which owns Georgia Power, says Vogtle will make the state’s electrical grid more reliable and resilient and help the utility meet its goal of zeroing out carbon emissions by 2050.

“These new Vogtle units not only will support the economy within our communities now and in the future, they demonstrate our global nuclear leadership,” Womack said in a statement.

Georgia Power said Plant Vogtle has provided billions of dollars of economic impact. In addition to the 800 permanent jobs created by the new units, the site employed more than 9,000 onsite jobs at the peak of construction.

The two new reactors, however, are seven years late and $17 billion over budget.

The expansion project’s overall cost, including financing, was listed in December as $31 billion for Georgia Power and three other owners. Add in $3.7 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid to walk away from construction, and the total nears $35 billion.

And Georgia Power customers will foot part of the bill.

Residential customers could see their bills rise $9 more a month to pay $7.56 billion of the construction costs.

Georgia Power owns 45.7% of the reactors. Smaller shares are owned by Oglethorpe Power Corp., which provides electricity to member-owned cooperatives, the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and the city of Dalton. Some Florida and Alabama utilities have also contracted to buy Vogtle’s power.

Even some opponents of Vogtle have said the United States can’t achieve carbon-free electricity without nuclear power. But Georgia Power, like other utilities, plans to build more fossil fuel generation in coming years, saying demand is rising sharply. That demand, driven by computer data centers, is being felt by multiple utilities across the country.

Calculations show Vogtle’s electricity will never be cheaper than other sources the owners could have chosen, even after the federal government reduced borrowing costs by guaranteeing repayment of $12 billion in loans.

“Hopefully, despite being seven years late and billions over budget, the two new units at Plant Vogtle will finally perform well for at least the next 80 years to justify the excessive cost,” said Liz Coyle, executive director of Georgia Watch, a consumer group that fought to limit rate increases.

Even as government officials and some utilities are looking to nuclear power to alleviate climate change, the cost of Vogtle could discourage utilities from pursuing nuclear power. American utilities have heeded Vogtle’s missteps, shelving plans for 24 other reactors proposed between 2007 and 2009. Two half-built reactors in South Carolina were abandoned. But Westinghouse is marketing the reactor design abroad. China has said it will build more reactors using the design, while Bulgaria, Poland and Ukraine also say they intend to build nuclear power stations using the Westinghouse reactor.