Georgia regulators say dramatically over-budget nuclear plant can move forward

Enlarge / Atomic plant Vogtle, located in Burke County, near Waynesboro, Georgia in USA. (Photo by Pallava Bagla/Corbis via Getty Images) (credit: Getty Images)

The Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) wants to keep two under-construction reactors at the Vogtle nuclear plant alive. According to a proposal offered by Commissioner Tim Echols and unanimously supported by the rest of the PSC, the plant will allow majority-owner Georgia Power to place some of the financial burden of completing the project on rate payers (that is, utility customers).

Vogtle is the only nuclear plant currently under construction in the US, and it was the first new nuclear reactor construction to begin in three decades when it was commissioned in 2006. (Unit 2 of the Watts-Bar power plant came online in 2016, but it began construction in 1976. Construction of the the 80% complete reactor was put on hold in the 1980's.)

With some incentives for completion included in the PSC's proposal, the reactors are now anticipated to come online in 2021 and 2022.

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