Nuclear Reactor Approved in U.S. for First Time Since 1978

NEW CONSTRUCTION: The U.S. government approved plans to build two new nuclear reactors of a new design in Georgia. Significant work has already taken place, including beginning the construction of the reactor vessel's bottom as seen here. Image: Courtesy of Southern Co.

Years of shifting and smoothing Georgia red clay paid off today, as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) voted to allow construction of two new nuclear reactors?(pdf) at the Plant Vogtle nuclear power station near Augusta. Atlanta?based utility giant Southern Co. will soon have permission to complete construction and operate two AP1000 type nuclear reactors designed by Westinghouse.

But what were initially lauded as the first reactors of a nuclear renaissance when proposed are more likely to be the exceptions that prove the rule of no new nuclear construction in the U.S. Only this twin set of reactors in Georgia, another pair in South Carolina and the completion of an old reactor in Tennessee are likely to be built in the U.S. for at least the next decade. "We won't build large numbers of new nuclear plants in the U.S. in the near term," says Marvin Fertel, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, a lobbying group for the nuclear industry.

The problem is twofold: electricity demand in the U.S. is not growing and natural gas, which can be burned to generate electricity, is cheap. As a result, utilities are building more natural gas?burning turbines rather than more expensive nuclear power plants.

"Today, you ought to build gas," Fertel admits. But "you don't want to build only gas."

That may become even truer as old coal-fired power plants are forced to retire by new pollution rules and/or natural gas prices rebound. Given the long lead times required to gain permits and actually build a nuclear power plant, however, five new reactors may be as many as the U.S. will see erected during this decade. "If they are built, I suspect all of them are post-2020," says Fertel of other reactor applications awaiting NRC review.

In fact, the only reason utilities in Georgia and South Carolina are building the new reactors is because the governments in those states have allowed them to pre-charge customers for their cost. Southern Co. is already charging customers $3.73 per month for the reactors' construction, expected to cost roughly $14 billion, and may receive a more than $8-billion loan guarantee from the federal government. In the absence of a national government policy that puts a premium on electricity generation that results in fewer emissions of greenhouse gases, there is little incentive to build nuclear power plants in the U.S. "If we get back to the carbon discussion, that will have an effect on new plants that are built," argues Bill Johnson, CEO of Progress Energy, one of the utilities filing for a construction license but with no plans to actually build a nuclear power plant in the near future. "Nuclear can't compete today.

Other than the Watts Bar unit No. 2 in Tennessee, which will simply be the completion of a reactor that started construction in the 1970s, the four new plants will all employ a novel design?the AP1000. They will be the first to employ so-called passive safety features, or technology that kicks in with or without human intervention. In the case of the AP1000 that means cooling water sits above the reactor core and, in the event of a meltdown like the ones at Fukushima Daiichi, will flow via gravity into the core to cool it with the automatic opening of a heat-sensitive valve.

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