First U.S. nuclear reactor built from scratch in decades enters commercial operation in Georgia::ATLANTA — A new reactor at a nuclear power plant in Georgia has entered commercial operation, becoming the first new American reactor built from scratch in decades.
Oh wow really? Hope it kicks off some good news for other plants in the future.
The good news - it’s online, generating clean power, and hopefully demonstrating the safety and benefits of modern nuclear plants.
The bad news - it’s $17B over budget (+120%) and 7 years behind schedule (+100%). Those kind of overages aren’t super promising for investors, but perhaps there are enough lessons learned on this one that will help the next one sail a little smoother.
Either way, good to see it can still be done in the US.
What’s the normal amount of over budget and behind schedule?
Ideally zero? But given this is the first US reactor in decades, it is by definition normal I suppose.
That would be ideal, but people always underestimate the cost and difficulty of things.
Those amounts there. For comparison for example another recent plant Olkiluoto 3 in Finland was 13 years late on a 5 year original construction timeline (18 years total construction time) and
108 billion euros over budget on original budget of 3 billion euros. (Final estimate it cost constructor13-1411 billion euros to build. Technically its fixed price contract so customer price is still 3 billion. However it did bankrupt the builder Areva and litigations are ongoing about, if the French can extract more money from he customer TVO)So doubling the price budget and doubling the build time is not at all unreasonable first estimate on the announced numbers of the builder and customers at start of project.
Also, according to the story, power costs will go up as a result of this reactor coming online.
True, BUT the cost increase was relatively small (~$3.50/mo) - can’t speak for everyone as I know people’s budgets can be quite tight right now, but that’s a price I’d be willing to pay for more nuclear on my grid.
Let it run 5 months and the money is back in.