GA PSC abdicates cost oversight for new nukes at Plant Vogtle

Finish it and then send we the taxpayers and ratepayers a bill? What kind of deal is that? So Southern Company already dodged a Fitch downgrade by delaying a decision, and now GA PSC wants to put it off for years more. That also delays solar deployment in Georgia, putting us still farther behind.

Ray Henry wrote for AP yesterday, Ga. approves deal on nuclear plant costs,

A debate over the rising cost of building a nuclear power plant in Georgia will be delayed for years under an agreement approved Tuesday by Georgia’s utility regulators.

The elected members of Georgia’s Public Service Commission unanimously approved a deal that will put off a decision on whether Georgia Power can raise its budget for building two more nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle (VOH’-gohl) until the first of those reactors is finished. An independent state monitor has estimated the first reactor will be finished in January 2018 at the earliest.

Regulators will continue monitoring company spending but will not make a decision on raising the bottom line budget figure.

So GA PSC will keep watching costs run over budget but will do nothing about it.

Oh, wait, it’s actually worse:

Further complicating matters, Southern Co. and the plant owners are simultaneously negotiating a legal dispute with the plant’s designers and builders worth an estimated $930 million to Georgia customers. Utility regulators said they were concerned that forcing Southern Co. to discuss its budget issues in public now might hurt its stance at the bargaining table.

The deal allows the utility to avoid a politically charged budget conflict as it deals with significant cost overruns on a separate coal gasification project in Mississippi and a rate case in Georgia.

Why is GA PSC helping Southern Company shirk its cost overruns in Mississippi? Is the Georgia Public Service Commission the Mississippi Monopoly Preservation Commission?

So even though GA PSC has heard new nukes make no financial sense and while solar power wins the world like the Internet did GA PSC just voted to let Georgia Power and Southern Company keep wasting our resources instead on the radiation-lying document-forging nuclear industry even after ten nukes have been shut down or cancelled in that past year.

Perhaps we can elect somebody else to be the “elected members of Georgia’s Public Service Commission”.

-jsq