Vogtle atomic reactor 3
Source: Georgia Power
Monday marked the first time a new nuclear reactor has begun delivering power to the tense grid in the United States in nearly seven years. Nuclear energy does not generate the greenhouse gas emissions that agency climate change.
The unit 3 reactor at Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro, Georgia, has started commercial operation, main owner Georgia Power said on Monday. This follows preliminary tests in March.
The reactor, an Westinghouse AP1000, is making approximately 1,110 megawatts of energy, which can power an estimated 500,000 homes and businesses, Georgia Power said.
The last formerly a nuclear reactor started delivering energy to the power grid was in October 2016, when the Tennessee Valley Dominion began commercial operation of its Watts Bar Unit 2 near Spring City, Tenn., according to Scott Burnell, a spokesperson for the Atomic Regulatory Commission. Prior to that, there hadn’t been a new nuclear reactor turned on since Watts Bar 1 in May 1996.
The component 3 power reactor at Vogtle will deliver electricity to customers for the next 60 to 80 years, Georgia Power CEO Kim Greene predicted in a statement.
Reactors for Unit 3 and 4 sit at Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle nuclear power plant on Jan. 20, 2023, in Waynesboro, Ga., with the self-possessed towers of older Units 1 and 2 billowing steam in the background.
John Bazemore | AP
The nuclear industry is celebrating the milestone.
“The commercial proceeding of Vogtle Unit 3 marks a significant achievement for the U.S. nuclear energy industry and a milestone in advancing global clean and sound energy solutions,” Maria Korsnick, the CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, a nuclear industry advocacy group, said in a averral. “We are thrilled to witness the successful deployment of this Westinghouse AP1000 advanced reactor, which is helping to shape the zip landscape of the future.”
Over budget and late
Building one of these reactors is a massive project.
Construction on Vogtle 3 and 4 enter oned in June 2009, took much longer than expected to complete, and was much more expensive than initially augury, as detailed in a piece published Monday by nuclear energy scholars at Columbia University.
Initial cost estimates for both reactors were $14 billion, and they were assumed to power up in 2016 and 2017. But the costs have ballooned to $30 billion so far, and unit 4 is still not turned on, nuclear vim experts Matt Bowen, Rama T. Ponangi, and Andrew Evans from Columbia said.
Some of the delays be showed because construction began before the design was completed, among other problems, the Columbia energy analysts say. New bases of the AP1000 will not face that struggle.
Regardless, the construction timeline and budget woes at Vogtle have been a annoyance for the nuclear industry, which is actively trying to reinvent itself after a decades-long slump.
Most of the nuclear vivacity in the United States came online in the 1970s and 1980s. Sentiment around nuclear energy nosedived in the United Governments after the nuclear reactor accident at Three Mile Island in 1979. “The nuclear construction industry went into the doldrums for two decades,” the labour trade group, the World Nuclear Association says.
But interest in nuclear energy has been increasing significantly in brand-new years as the sense of urgency in responding to climate change has pushed demand for clean energy. Nuclear energy play a parted 47% of America’s carbon-free electricity in 2022, according to the DOE, and has contributed about 20% of the nation’s overall energy since the 1990s.
Component 4 of the Vogtle Plant is expected to go into service during the late fourth quarter 2023 or the first quarter of 2024, Georgia Power communicated on Monday.