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Georgia Power completes Plant Vogtle nuclear project
Georgia Power completes Plant Vogtle nuclear project
The second of two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle has entered full commercial operation, Georgia Power officials announced Monday.
Unit 4, which went online nine months after the completion of Unit 3 at the plant south of Augusta, can produce enough electricity to power an estimated 500,000 homes and businesses.
“The new Vogtle units are a key piece of our strategy to meet the energy needs of our customers not only tomorrow, but 20 years from now,” said Kim Greene, Georgia Power’s chairman, president and CEO. “I’m so proud of the teams who have worked tirelessly to deliver the first newly constructed nuclear units in the U.S. in more than 30 years.”
Georgia is a state that is not at high risk of running out of power. I am grateful that we are moving ahead with the true energy of the future. Nuclear is a zero-emissions energy source. There is no source of energy with a higher density.
Representatives of environmental and consumer advocacy groups complained as the costs escalated that Georgia Power and its utility partners in the project – Oglethorpe Power, MEAG Power, and Dalton Utilities – should have more aggressively pursued renewable energy as a less costly alternative to nuclear power.
Georgia Power executives countered that nuclear energy is the only zero-emission baseload energy source available today – offering high reliability around the clock. Last year, nuclear energy produced at plants Vogtle and Hatch provided more than 25% of Georgia Power’s electrical generation.
The environmentalists don’t want zero emissions, they want us in the dark. Not themselves, of course, just us.
Now, this will cost me all of an extra $9 a month. Happy to pay that for energy security.
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“Representatives of environmental and consumer advocacy groups complained as the costs escalated that Georgia Power and its utility partners in the project – Oglethorpe Power, MEAG Power, and Dalton Utilities – should have more aggressively pursued renewable energy as a less costly alternative to nuclear power.“
How does anyone manage to say that with a straight face without Baghdad Bob mendacity?
Part of why Nukes are costly is because they over regulate.
Like making the Death Penalty hard to employee then complaining about it.
Note to self: start next manufacturing company in Georgia.
And the density of its opponents is also impressive.
If that’s 1GWe, with no losses that will charge 500 Tesla semis plus 1000 cars at respective Megacharger and Supercharger charge rates of 1MW and 500KW.
Don’t give them ideas.
Even if it were to get them to stop opposing nuclear power, EVs still aren’t worth it.
It’s great to read that new nuclear plants are being built. I didn’t know that new ones were being constructed.
Yep.
In many cases, it’s because they fail to understand the *time* aspect of electricity. Various analyses from prestigious sources assert a ‘low levelized cost of energy’ from wind & solar. LCOE is derived by looking at the total cost of a project over 20 years or whatever, and then dividing the by the total kwh produced over time same time period…which totally ignores the question of *when* the electricity is produced versus when it is actually needed.
How do you get a nuclear power plant operating in 2024?
Start permitting in 1994!
Don’t kid yourself, those folks and all of their lawsuits and bogus faux environmental demands are most of the reason these plants take as long as they do to built. They are the reason the price tags for Nuclear power is always creeping upward.
I believe if one participated in any stonewalling of nuclear or natural gas electrification they should be bared from the grid to live with their totally renewable and unreliable electricity, no exceptions.
Nuclear power is probably one of the cheapest power sources when you consider how they are used vs how they are amortized. Most are costed for a 20 year life which is not to date how we have been operating.
The design life of the plants built in the 60’s and 70’s was 20 to 30 years. With control system upgrades the life of these plants is still on going, long after their initial bonds were paid off.
The nuclear plants that have been recently closed have been for shortsighted political reasons (the government bribe the utilities to spend on renewables). A nuclear plant operates 95% of the time at a constant power. The 5% downtime is for reloading the rods and maintenance. No other source give us that kind of performance.
We are in the process of refurbing all our nuclear plants in Ontario. One just got done a year a head of schedule and under budget. Given some are approaching the age of 70 years we got our moneys worth and then some. Turns out the key to nuclear power is to the plants in swing districts.
This is really wonderful news for all the normal people. I thought we had been defeated on the environmental wacko front. The only question now is, how do you pronounce “Vogtle?”
Silent T
Vo gul
Finally!
There’s a lot going on with nuclear. This update is from a year ago, but may still be useful.
It will be years before this comes to fruition, but Tennessee will increase the number of reactors here eventually. Molten salt, baby!
The South will run the country, because we will have the power to do so.
Molten salt can be used as a heat storage medium, allowing the reactor to run flat out while accommodating fluctuations in load. Terra Power (Bill Gates) is pursuing this approach jointly with the GE-Hitachi nuclear joint venture (which now falls under GE Vernova following the GE spinoff of the energy business) Here’s a press release:
Natrium
The is more truth to this tongue in cheek observation. We are witnessing the de-industrialization of Germany at this very moment. It takes large amounts of relativity cheap power to be an exporting nation. They gave that up the moment Russian punched their natural gas ticket. They were forced last winter (which to their good luck was mild) to immediately revert with the lowest form of coal ( lignite) just to heat their homes and keep the lights on.
Two decades of reduced emission erased in one winter.
And when Trump tried to warn them, they laughed.
Only a few options exist for baseload power. Hint: Wind and Solar are not among those options.
There’s no better baseload generation, for consistency and duration, with highly predictable results, than nuclear. Fear and politics is what nuked nuclear, but as noted here and in other places, it’s coming back – slowly, but it’s coming back.
It’s that or rolling blackouts in the peak heat of summer or peak lows in the winter. Good news, though: We can look forward to solar advocates freezing in their homes during a December ice storm, wondering what’s wrong with the grid.
As long as we make them live by what they say they want. Problem is, we’re too soft-hearted and would send them power they don’t want.
My former state of Minnesota is definitely on the California train. No new mines, no new nuclear power, plans to shut down existing nuclear power one day, wind & solar is the future. The greenies even want to forbid electricity bought from Canada that comes from hydroelectric dams. Who would want to create new industries in states where you know the price of electricity is going to cost substantially more in the future?
This is awesome news.
Give me enough energy, and all kinds of problems are solvable. You can even convert any form of carbon into liquid fuel, even hippies. If we wanted less CO2, there are ways to capture it.
Exactly
We could. But why?