Dive Summary:
- According to a Southern Co. executive, the construction of a new nuclear power plant near Augusta, Georgia might be delayed even further than originally thought, thus pushing commercial operation into 2017.
- Southern's Vice President of Nuclear Construction David McKinney said the utility doesn't agree with the new timeline proposed by the contractors and feels that the first of the two new reactors can still be finished by April of 2016.
- The schedule for the project was originally delayed because it took Southern longer than expected to get permission from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
From the article:
The first of the new reactors at Plant Vogtle was originally slated to produce commercial power starting on April 1, 2016, with the second reactor following a year later. In August, the utility publicly acknowledged those dates were unrealistic. Instead, it aimed for getting the first reactor operational no earlier than November 2016, with the second coming online the following year. The timeline that McKinney discussed would add months onto those projections, although the utility has not agreed to them.
"The November 2016 and November 2017 dates we believe are probably theoretically achievable — it would take significant compression to achieve them," McKinney said. ...
