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Southern Co. Likely to Locate Nuclear Power Plant on Waynesboro, Ga.-Area Site

Posted on: Thursday, 14 July 2005, 09:01 CDT

Jul. 14--Southern Co.'s first new nuclear power plant in decades will likely sit on the Plant Vogtle site along the Savannah River near Waynesboro, if the energy giant decides to build one.

That's where Southern has been performing the tests needed to apply for an initial permit for a new nuclear plant, Southern Nuclear spokesman Steve Higginbottom confirmed Wednesday.

Southern has said it will apply for that first, "early site" permit next year.

The permit requires the company to submit environmental and geological information about a specific piece of land. Southern Co. is doing the testing to get that information at the Vogtle site and nowhere else, Higginbottom said.

Despite that, Higginbottom said the company had not yet made a decision to site a new nuclear unit there -- or anywhere else, for that matter.

Like other energy companies now inching through the nuclear permitting process for the first time in almost 30 years, Southern Co. says it has made "no commitment" to actually build a plant but wants to keep its options open.

No new nuclear power plant project has been licensed since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Construction on the two existing nuclear units at Plant Vogtle began before that, although the units weren't completed until the late 1980s.

Safety concerns and the high cost of building nuclear plants left the industry and Wall Street wary of new plants. Plant Vogtle's units, originally estimated to cost $975 million, ended up costing nearly $9 billion by the time they were done.

Aversion to nuclear building continued in the 1990s as electric deregulation -- then considered imminent -- threatened utilities' ability to recoup building costs. Interest in widespread electric deregulation has since waned.

The Bush administration has been actively promoting a nuclear comeback and supported a new, streamlined permitting process to encourage utilities to try again.

The new permitting system, the possibility of federal financial assistance, new and purportedly cheaper plant designs, and the threat of caps on greenhouse gases emitted by other kinds of power plants all helped revive utility interest in nuclear power.

Southern Co. has been publicly tiptoeing toward nuclear power since early last year. It joined a consortium of utilities dedicated to "testing" -- read "applying for" -- new permits, and independently announced intentions to apply for a site permit by next year.

Higginbottom said a new nuclear power plant would take about 10 years to bring on line. In addition to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the project would have to clear the Georgia Public Service Commission and state environmental regulators.

Southern Co. has been meeting with community leaders in Waynesboro to talk about a new plant.

"Southern Co., and Southern Nuclear and Georgia Power, have been very helpful in keeping us abreast of their plans and what they're doing," said Waynesboro Mayor Jesse Stone.

Stone said Waynesboro and the surrounding county supported a new nuclear plant at Vogtle and that the original 1970s plans there called for four plants, not the current two. "We always wanted those two more," he said.

"We've met with them several times to express our support," he said. "A wide range of community leaders have, and have expressed our unanimous support."

State environmental activists, meanwhile, are promising a fight.

They said the original Vogtle cost overruns alone should discourage investment in a new nuclear plant.

"This diverts time and money from cheaper and safer and more resilient energy alternatives that are going to serve local communities far better than nuclear power can," said Rita Kilpatrick, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

"It's an unsafe technology, with phenomenal costs and risks," she said.

Neill Herring -- of the state Sierra Club -- said he had no faith that cost overruns wouldn't dog a new nuclear project.

And he said a proposed new plant at the Vogtle site would be devastating for the Savannah River. The existing plants pull millions of gallons of water daily from the river and discharge some of it back at higher temperatures.

"The river just can't take another plant discharging into it," Herring said. "The river is maxed out."

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Source: The Atlanta Journal and Constitution

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