Tony Bartelme reports that workers from across the nation have moved here to build two nuclear reactors, so from Missouri and Texas, welders and electricians pile into cars and trucks. From Georgia and South Carolina, they form a line out the gates to a country road that’s stop and go. Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear reactor project is just 130 miles from South Carolina’s V.C. Summer Nuclear Station, but activity at the two complexes couldn’t be more different.
At South Carolina's V.C. Summer site north of Columbia, parking lots are mostly empty. Many areas resemble junkyards after workers there lost their jobs and walked off the site in July. Left behind: trucks with their doors wide open; construction plans scattering in the wind, and tens of millions of dollars in equipment and supplies, now rusting and rotting away. But here in the pine lands and cotton fields south of Augusta, nearly 6,000 workers still have jobs. And, at shift change on this rainy Monday afternoon, they create an hour-long traffic jam. Behind them, a dozen cranes rise from a vast parking lot that’s still packed.Two new cooling towers stand so high they merge with rain clouds.
The Vogtle and V.C. Summer nuclear projects were identical twins. Both had the same reactor design, the same contractor, the same modular construction strategy. They began at roughly the same time in the late 2000s. Both benefited from new laws that shifted financial risks from utilities to ratepayers. But only one of these twins survived. Why? A deeper look at the Vogtle nuclear project helps explain what happened to its South Carolina twin, how Westinghouse bungled construction at both sites. It exposes South Carolina’s lax oversight and how this failed to give ratepayers a true picture of V.C. Summer’s problems. Georgia, meantime, had monitors who consistently and painstakingly pointed out the project's problems — in public. Ultimately, Vogtle's storyshows how money and political power triumphed over incompetence, at least so far.
The Vogtle nuclear complex is roughly halfway between Allendale and Augusta, just off a two-lane road that roughly follows the Savannah River. Amid the area’s rolling hills are a scattering of modest homes, dozens ofRV parks for workers and two convenience stores. A prodigious amount of roadkill is a testament to its remote location and heavy construction traffic. Southern Company’s subsidiary, Georgia Power, began work here in 1974 on two nuclear reactors, Vogtle 1 and 2. The company named them after Alvin W. Vogtle, a former chairman and president, who among other things was a World War II prisoner of war. The feisty Vogtle tried to break out four times, succeeding on his fifth. His exploits inspired Steve McQueen’s character in the movie "The Great Escape."
Georgia Power’s relationship with nuclear power isn’t so different than its persistent former chairman. In 1979, while Vogtle 1 and 2 units were still under construction,Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island plant had a near meltdown. Public support for nuclear power cooled, and chilled even more after Russia's Chernobyl blast in 1986. But Georgia Power kept pushing forward. Vogtle 1 finally went online in 1987, and Unit 2 in 1989. By then, America's nuclear construction industry had begun a two-decade hibernation. Burned by high costs and numerous failures, energy producers moved toward coal and natural gas....(of course they would. Short-term perspectives always do stupid things like this).
But in the early 2000s, Georgia Power and other utilities were ready to try again. In 2003,a little-known group, NuStart Energy, formed to usher in a new era of nuclear power in the United States. The group included Southern Company, SCANA and nine other utilities, mostly in the South. Joining them were Westinghouse and General Electric, each with a new reactor design. They stood to make tens of billions of dollars if this nuclear renaissance materialized.
Georgia Power serves 2.5 million customers versus SCANA's 717,000. In South Carolina, roughly 18 cents per dollar on an SCE&G bill goes toward the nuclear project. Because of Georgia Power’s larger customer base, it’s just 5 cents per dollar for its customers.
Wise called the difference in ratepayer risks “remarkable.” The 18 percent charge on SCE&G electric bills “will have a terrible impact on South Carolina residents and businesses for decades to come," he said. "We're better off today with it going forward," he added, "In South Carolina you have a finger pointing campaign about who knew what and when and who’s going to pay for it all. No good comes out of any of those scenarios.”
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