Southern Co. (NYSE:SO) said Wednesday that Unit 3 at Vogtle nuclear plant in Waynesboro, Ga., has suffered yet another delay and is now not expected to come online until at least the second quarter of 2023, rather than the first quarter as previously predicted.
The utility disclosed the change in plans in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
According to the filing, Southern Nuclear was in the process of start-up and pre-operational testing for Unit 3 when it detected “vibrations associated with certain piping within the cooling system,” which it is currently “in the process of remediating.”
Details of the vibrations were not provided in the filing. Southern said it plans to file a license amendment request with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in hopes of speeding up the remediation process, but that initial criticality will not occur until February, and Unit 3 will not enter service until April.
Jacob Hawkins, a spokesperson for Georgia Power, said in an email to RTO Insider that the utility’s remediation plans include “strengthening the support for the pipes,” which must be done before progressing to initial criticality. Hawkins said Georgia Power is “focused on getting this project done right, with safety and quality first.”
The delay is expected to raise base capital costs for Georgia Power, the operator of the plant, by up to $15 million per month, not including additional costs for construction, support resources, or testing. Southern said it will share additional updates during its earnings call in February and warned of “ongoing or future challenges,” including management of contracts and vendors, and subcontractor performance.
Vogtle Unit 3 has been under construction since 2009, along with Unit 4; Units 1 and 2 at the site have been in operation since 1987 and 1989, respectively. They are the only reactors currently under construction in the U.S., and Southern is calling them “the first new nuclear units built in the United States in the last three decades.” When units 3 and 4 come online, Vogtle will be the only four-unit nuclear facility in the country.
The new units were originally intended to be operational by 2017, but the project has undergone numerous delays that provided considerable fuel for its detractors. Additional criticism has attached to the plant’s cost overruns; in its semi-annual progress report to the Georgia Public Service Commission in August, Georgia Power said total construction expenses up to that point were $8.2 billion, above the original approved cost of $7.3 billion, and the final cost would likely be more than $10.7 billion.
However, the project has its supporters as well; Nuclear Energy Institute CEO Maria Korsnick in 2021 praised management and staff at Southern for pressing on, “undeterred by a global pandemic [and] getting the job done.” (See Nuclear Key to Clean Energy Future, NEI Says.)
Georgia Power announced in October that it had begun loading fuel into Unit 3’s reactor core following the receipt of a 103(g) filing from the NRC in August, indicating that “the new unit has been constructed and will be operated in conformance with the combined license and NRC regulations.” Unit 4 completed cold hydro testing in December, the utility said, leaving hot functional testing, scheduled to begin this quarter, as the last major test remaining for the reactor.
