{"id":250,"date":"2012-12-19T12:06:37","date_gmt":"2012-12-19T17:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/original-nuclear-plant-vogtle-cost-overruns.html"},"modified":"2012-12-19T12:06:37","modified_gmt":"2012-12-19T17:06:37","slug":"original-nuclear-plant-vogtle-cost-overruns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/original-nuclear-plant-vogtle-cost-overruns.html","title":{"rendered":"Original nuclear Plant Vogtle cost overruns"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nWhy should we expect Southern Company to be any better at controlling\ncosts now than back in the 1970s and 1980s when its original\nnukes on the Savannah River went massively over budget?\nMassively as in 26 times as much per unit as originally projected.\n<\/p>\n

\nKristi Swartz wrote for the AJC 30 Jan 2012,\n\nA financial look at Plant Vogtle nuclear projects<\/a>,\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n\n\"From<\/a>\nWhen the two original nuclear units at Plant Vogtle were planned,\nthe total cost estimate was $660 million.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nYet, as\n\nJon Gertner reported for NYTimes 16 July 2006<\/a>,\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nThe plant took almost 15 years to move from blueprints to being\noperational. And by the time it began producing electricity in the\nlate 1980’s, its total cost, $8.87 billion, was so far overbudget\nthat Vogtle became yet another notorious example of the evils of\nnuclear energy….\n<\/p>\n

\nThe grand plan was to have four reactors. Instead, it was scaled\nback to two, Vogtle Unit 1 (finished in 1987) and Vogtle Unit 2\n(1989).\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThat’s right, 4 nuclear units were planned for $660,000,000\nfifteen (15) years later only 2 units were built,\nfor $8,870,000,000.\nThat’s more than $8 billion in cost overruns,\nor more than 13 times the original cost estimate.\nSo per unit, that’s more than 26 times the original estimate,\nor more than $4 billion per unit.\n<\/p>\n

\nSwartz provided a handy table of cost estimates by year:\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
1971<\/td>\n$660 million<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1977<\/td>\n$2.7 billion<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1981<\/td>\n$5.5 billion<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1983<\/td>\n$6.6 billion<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1984<\/td>\n$7.2 billion<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1985<\/td>\n$8.4 billion<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1986<\/td>\n$8.4 billion<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1987<\/td>\n$8.9 billion <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\nAnd of course that $8,870,000,000 is in 1987 dollars.\nIn\n\n2012 dollars that would be about $17,976,000,000<\/a>.\nOr about $9 billion a unit.\n<\/p>\n

\nWhy exactly should we expect Southern Company to be able to build\ntwo new nuclear units for less than $9 billion each,\nor $18 billion for two?\nProbably plus even more cost overruns above that?\nBack then excuses included new regulations after the Three Mile Island\nnuclear incident.\nThose regulations are still in effect, plus new ones.\nCosts of raw materials, labor, planning, etc. have only increased.\nSo we can only expect SO’s new nukes to cost more than $18 billion.\n<\/p>\n

\nSouthern Company and Georgia Power of course know their own history.\nWhy do you think they organized that\n\nthree-legged nuclear regulatory-capture stool<\/a>\nof\na stealth tax on Georgia Power bills, PSC approval of cost overruns,\nand an $8.33 billion federal loan guarantee?\nSouthern Company isn’t on the hook for any of these cost overruns,\nor for any potential default on loans.\nAnd Georgia Power can charge you\n\neven if the new nukes are cancelled!<\/a>\nSo why are we letting them run up the bill?\n<\/p>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nYou can protest\n\ndirectly to Georgia Power about that CWIP stealth tax on your bill.<\/a>\nOr you can contact\n\nthe GA PSC or the state legislature.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n-jsq\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why should we expect Southern Company to be any better at controlling costs now than back in the 1970s and 1980s when its original nukes on the Savannah River went massively over budget? Massively as in 26 times as much per unit as originally projected. Kristi Swartz wrote for the AJC 30 Jan 2012, A […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[142,14,17,8,18,2,19,104,21],"tags":[712,28,8746,8704,8707,8701,8708,8699,8709,8702,753,12,7,8737,380,8711,107,220,108,6],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cwip","category-economy","category-ga-psc","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-government","category-history","category-nuclear","category-planning","tag-boondoggle","tag-cost","tag-cwip","tag-economy","tag-ga-psc","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-government","tag-history","tag-lake","tag-legislature","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-nuclear","tag-overrun","tag-planning","tag-plant-vogtle","tag-regulatory-capture","tag-southern-company","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-42","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}