Georgia nuke plant ‘too big to fail’?

The next chapter in the seemingly endless saga of Plant Vogtle, Georgia Power Company’s perennially cost-overrunning nuclear power generating facility, could be a doozy.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jim Galloway, in his latest “Political Insider” blog, reports that one of Georgia’s public service commissioners is actively pursuing a new way of restarting the stalled work on the Savannah River facility’s third and fourth nuclear reactors: federal funding.

He’s doing more than just thinking about it. Galloway reports that when Commissioner Tim Echols learned Energy Secretary Rick Perry was back home in Texas, scheduled to speak at an Earth Day event (no comment), he flew to Dallas, attended the luncheon and handed Perry a letter. In it, Echols had written that federal help might be necessary for Vogtle.

“My goal,” Echols told Galloway Monday, “was to let him know that, just because the utility wants to finish the reactors, it doesn’t mean that they will. Because the public service commission has the final say on how much of the cost is passed onto the ratepayers.”

The alternatives, of course, are shareholders or taxpayers, or some combination thereof.

Galloway paints a fascinating picture of business developments and Georgia politics that could make this the hottest of buttons in the 2018 elections.

The short version: Westinghouse, under contract to build the new reactors, declared bankruptcy last month. A short-term agreement with Georgia Power to keep workers on the job is set to expire today, but is likely to be extended. Toshiba, Westinghouse’s parent company, is still involved, but “there is some doubt,” Galloway writes, “that Toshiba itself will be able to survive Westinghouse’s collapse.” In any case, Georgia Power will soon present the PSC with estimates of the cost of completing the two reactors.

So much for the economics. As for the politics, eight years ago the General Assembly approved letting Georgia Power start charging customers for the financing costs of the two new units. Part of the deal was that those units would be up and running … by 2017. Oops.

“Think about that,” Galloway writes. “You’re a homeowner who, upon the say-so of a Legislature and governor (Sonny Perdue), has had to pay extra … for a service you now may never see.”

Many of those legislators, and two members of the PSC (though not Echols) are up for reelection. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who supported the legislation, is a leading candidate for governor.

As PSC Chairman Stan Wise — who is up for reelection — ruefully observed, “We didn’t think we’d be the test case for the next generation of nuclear reactors.”

This could come down to Perry’s and the coal-focused Trump administration’s interest (or lack of it) in nuclear energy. Or it could be as simple as Washington saying, in effect, “This is a problem for Georgia, not American taxpayers.”

Which would bring it back to Georgia Power and the PSC. Which explains one commissioner exploring whatever options there might be.

This story was originally published April 27, 2017 at 5:04 PM with the headline "Georgia nuke plant ‘too big to fail’?."