from Wire Reports

7/18/13 ATLANTA – Georgia Power executives repeated assurances that the utility would be better at managing costs Thursday in the first day of hearings on raising the construction budget for its work at Plant Vogtle.

The executives fielded critical questions Thursday during their first testimony since announcing the firm could not meet its state-approved budget to build two more nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle. Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power has asked to raise the budget for its share of the massive project by $737 million to roughly $6.85 billion.

“The trend is delay and overruns,” Public Service Commissioner Stan Wise said. “Is there any reason to believe the trend is not going to continue through the construction phase?”

Read the whole article: Augusta Chronicle

by Gloria Tatum

7/17/13 (APN) ATLANTA — After weeks of advocacy by environmental groups and their unlikely allies, the Tea Party Patriots, the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) on July 11, 2013 voted three to two in favor of an amendment by Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald (District 4) to increase the amount of solar energy in Georgia Power’s energy mix by one percent.

Commissioners McDonald, Tim Echols (District 2), and Doug Everett (District 1) voted in favor of the amendment to Georgia Power’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), while Chuck Eaton (District 3) and Stan Wise (District 5) voted against.

Read the whole article: Atlanta Progressive News

By Joshua Stewart

7/2/13 ATLANTA — The state Public Service Commission votes July 11 on Georgia Power’s 20-year plan, the road map for providing electricity to 2.4 million customers. That includes the mix of fuels the company will use and the efforts the company undertakes to get customers to use less energy.

This happens every few years. But this time, Georgia Power also wants to retire 16 coal- and oil-fired power-generating units at six power plants.

PSC Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald said at a hearing in April that this version of Georgia Power’s plan “is filled with the most-significant issues” of any Integrated Resources Plan in the last decade.

Read the whole article: GPB News

By Matthew Charles Cardinale

ATLANTA, Georgia, 6/27/13 (IPS) – With the announced closures of four nuclear reactors in the United States so far this year and the cancellation of proposed facilities elsewhere in the country, some activists believe the U.S. nuclear industry is beginning to crumble.

Earlier this month, Southern California Edison (SCE) announced it would close the troubled San Onofre Plant, which has two reactors and is located on the beaches of San Diego, California.

The reactors were shut down in 2012 when they were discovered to be leaking larger than normal amounts of radioactive pollution.

Read the whole article: Inter Press Service

by Michael Grunwald

6/27/13: America is having a solar revolution, and it’s a big deal. Solar installations increased more than 1,000% during President Barack Obama’s first term and contributed nearly half the new power capacity added to the grid in the first quarter of this year. We’ve always gotten energy from the sun—oil, gas and coal are essentially millions of years’ worth of photosynthesized sunlight—but now we’re getting it directly, without drilling or spilling or earth-broiling emissions. Solar prices have plunged 80% since 2009, a boon to installers like SolarCity, Sungevity and Sunrun, which have grown from a few hundred customers to more than 35,000 today. It’s also good for consumers, who can get clean power that’s cheaper than coal in large swaths of the country.

Read the whole article: TIME Magazine

6/17/13: This blog was co-authored by SACE staff Sara Barczak and George Cavros.

Has the so-called “nuclear renaissance” finally met economic reality? The nuclear industry recently experienced their “worst week” since the Fukushima disaster in Japan. Not only did Duke Energy scrap plans to build new reactors at their Shearon Harris site in North Carolina but the many events which unfolded in Florida, culminating with Governor Scott’s signing of Senate bill 1472 late last Friday, affirm that the “renaissance” is crumbling – and economic reality is prevailing.

Read the whole article: cleanenergy.org

by Debbie Dooley

6/13/13: Show me the Money! That’s what I say to those who claim that the Plant Vogtle construction projects in Augusta, Georgia, will result in lower-cost electricity for Georgia ratepayers over the next few decades. Let me be clear that I support all forms of energy production for our future – from nuclear, coal, natural gas, biomass, solar and wind.

Unfortunately, they can’t show us the money. That’s correct! You are NOT allowed to know what the cost of energy will be once Vogtle reactors 3 & 4 eventually come online in 2017 or 2018 or 2019 or 2020, or whenever! It’s not possible because it’s Georgia Power’s “trade secret” and not accessible to ratepayers like you and me that are stakeholders in this project. Georgia Power claims the rate is a “trade secret” to be protected from their competitors. I did not realize monopolies had competitors. From what little company executives have said, it’s pretty clear that Vogtle and potentially billions of dollars in overruns there will cost us – Big time!

Read the whole article: Citizen Georgia

$14 billion Plant Vogtle expansion will become a model—or blow up in our faces

by Scott Henry

6/12/13: If you didn’t think gambling is legal in Georgia, guess again. A multi-billion bet has been made in a little community on the banks of the Savannah River. And—you knew this was coming, right?—it’s been made with your money.

Now that we’ve got your attention, we wanted to point you toward an interesting article that ran earlier this week in the New York Times (paywall, naturally). Written by Matthew L. Wald, the paper’s in-house expert on nuclear energy, the article explains that the eyes of the country are on Georgia because of some unusual construction work going on about a half-hour south of Augusta.

Read the whole article: Atlanta Magazine

by Matthew Wald

6/11/13 WAYNESBORO, 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.

The first of the two Vogtle reactors is set to begin in 2017. Construction is one-third complete, at least 14 months behind schedule.

But something else is at stake with the reactors called Vogtle 3 and 4: the future of the American nuclear industry itself.

Read the whole article: New York Times

by Walter C. Jones

4/8/13 ATLANTA — Without saying “I told you so” in so many words, groups opposed to the construction of two additional nuclear reactors at Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle are pointing out that their predictions have come true.

“Unfortunately, this is what we had been hearing and expecting. It is absolutely a significant change,” said Elena Parent, executive director of the advocacy group Georgia Watch.

Meanwhile, the company, which is only one of the plant’s owners, says despite construction delays and inflated costs that the doubling of electricity generation at the plant will still benefit its customers.

Read the whole article: Augusta Chronicle

Read the 8th Vogtle Construction Monitoring Report