From 1440 news:
"A new reactor unit at Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear power plant went into commercial operation yesterday, capping a 15-year expansion that makes the site the single biggest producer of carbon-free energy in the country.
The reactor, known as Unit 4, comes online less than a year after the similarly built Unit 3 was flipped on—together they were the first nuclear reactors constructed from scratch in the US in more than 30 years. The plant is expected to produce 30 million megawatt-hours of power annually, or roughly 23% of Georgia's total power consumption (though it will also service customers in Florida and Alabama).
The project was expected to begin producing power in 2016, but experienced significant delays and unexpected costs, driving the final price tag from $14B to $35B. Customer rates were raised a total of 10% to help cover financing.
A single half-inch uranium pellet produces roughly the same amount of energy as 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas or 1 ton of coal. See how commercial nuclear reactors work here."
I worked at Westinghouse Electric in 2010-2012 as in-house counsel in Purchasing. We were buying equipment (pumps, compressors, valves, etc.) that were required by our customer to have a two-year warranty after startup. Think about that. We bought the stuff in 2006-20012, it was delivered to the site, and the warranty STARTED YESTERDAY! Every couple years, Weatinghouse had to go back to those vendors and PAY FOR yet another extension on their warranties. We/they ended up paying many times the acquisition cost of the equipment in extended warranty surcharges.
When I was with Westinghouse, we knew all this. We didn't know exactly how long it would take for the plant to start up, but we knew were losing barrels of money on equipment alone, plus hundreds of millions on field change orders; this was the first time anyone had built an AP1000 reactor (several plants under construction at the same time). Westinghouse management was reporting to the parent company, Toshiba, that the project was still going to be profitable.
Believe it or not, this is one of THREE hundred-million dollar fiasco's I worked on in my long and spotted career. But this one was surely the biggest.
"A new reactor unit at Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear power plant went into commercial operation yesterday, capping a 15-year expansion that makes the site the single biggest producer of carbon-free energy in the country.
The reactor, known as Unit 4, comes online less than a year after the similarly built Unit 3 was flipped on—together they were the first nuclear reactors constructed from scratch in the US in more than 30 years. The plant is expected to produce 30 million megawatt-hours of power annually, or roughly 23% of Georgia's total power consumption (though it will also service customers in Florida and Alabama).
The project was expected to begin producing power in 2016, but experienced significant delays and unexpected costs, driving the final price tag from $14B to $35B. Customer rates were raised a total of 10% to help cover financing.
A single half-inch uranium pellet produces roughly the same amount of energy as 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas or 1 ton of coal. See how commercial nuclear reactors work here."
I worked at Westinghouse Electric in 2010-2012 as in-house counsel in Purchasing. We were buying equipment (pumps, compressors, valves, etc.) that were required by our customer to have a two-year warranty after startup. Think about that. We bought the stuff in 2006-20012, it was delivered to the site, and the warranty STARTED YESTERDAY! Every couple years, Weatinghouse had to go back to those vendors and PAY FOR yet another extension on their warranties. We/they ended up paying many times the acquisition cost of the equipment in extended warranty surcharges.
When I was with Westinghouse, we knew all this. We didn't know exactly how long it would take for the plant to start up, but we knew were losing barrels of money on equipment alone, plus hundreds of millions on field change orders; this was the first time anyone had built an AP1000 reactor (several plants under construction at the same time). Westinghouse management was reporting to the parent company, Toshiba, that the project was still going to be profitable.
Believe it or not, this is one of THREE hundred-million dollar fiasco's I worked on in my long and spotted career. But this one was surely the biggest.