Editor’s note: This article was corrected at 7:35 p.m. July 9, 2024 to reflect the correct outage period for Vogtle 3 of Jan. 28 through Feb. 1, 2024.
ATLANTA – A malfunction within the cooling system at the second of two additional nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle is forcing Georgia Power to delay the unit’s in-service date until the second quarter of this year.
The first of the two new reactors went on line in late July but was shut down for maintenance last week for five days.
Georgia Power announced Thursday in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that vibrations associated with certain piping within the cooling system at Vogtle Unit 4 were discovered during start-up and pre-operational testing. The problem has been fixed.
Both the vibrations and the methods used to fix them were similar to those experienced before Vogtle Unit 3 went online last summer.
Before discovery of the vibrations, completion of Unit 4 had been expected to occur during the first quarter.
The new schedule isn’t expected to affect the total capital cost forecast for the project. However, any slippage in the timetable for completion beyond March 31 would reduce Georgia Power’s return on equity to zero, which would reduce earnings by about $30 million for each month until the work is finished.
The state Public Service Commission (PSC) voted in December to let Georgia Power pass on to customers almost $7.6 billion of its costs in building the two additional nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle, the first built in the United States since the 1980s.
The project, originally expected to cost $14 billion when the PSC approved it in 2009, has more than doubled due to a series of cost overruns and delays in the construction schedule. The project will increase the average residential customer’s bill by $8.95 per month.
Environmental groups critical of the Plant Vogtle expansion argue nuclear energy is a bad investment and that Georgia Power would be better off more aggressively pursuing the development of renewable energy sources.
Georgia Power officials say the project is a sound long-term investment that will provide safe, reliable, and emission-free energy for up to 80 years.
Vogtle Unit 3, which began its operation July 31, 2023 — more than seven years late — produced no electricity from Jan. 28 through Feb. 1, 2024. A spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the production pause was for scheduled maintenance.
“Southern Nuclear is maintaining plant safety,” wrote NRC spokesman Dave Gasperson in an email.
Edwin Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists posted more details on X, formerly known as Twitter:
“Thanks to Platts, we now know the reason for the Vogtle-3 #nuclear reactor shutdown: the plant is in a “brief maintenance outage” to make “repairs to valves within the unit’s passive core cooling system.” The valves are one of the weak points of the design …”
Gasperson said the NRC’s focus is on safety-related issues.
“In outages like the one at Vogtle 3, we may only be actively involved in public disclosure if the circumstances rise to a level that necessitates our intervention or detailed reporting due to safety concerns,” he wrote. “That’s not the case here.”
The Current’s Mary Landers contributed to this article.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat, an initiative of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.