One of the two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle has been offline for roughly a week because of a “valve issue,” Georgia Power said on Monday, and it’s unclear when it will restart.
Unit 3, one of four reactors at the nuclear power plant 35 miles southeast of Augusta, was shut down July 8 after a valve malfunctioned on one of the pumps that supplies “feedwater” to the steam generator, Georgia Power spokesman Jacob Hawkins said. Feedwater removes heat from the reactor and is used to produce steam, which spins the generator’s turbines to create electricity.
After the valve problem was identified, plant operators manually tripped the reactor to shut it down, said Diane Screnci, a spokeswoman for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Hawkins said all of the unit’s safety systems functioned as designed, and that necessary repairs have been completed.
“At no time was the safety of the employees or community at risk,” Hawkins added.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Citing “competitive reasons,” Hawkins would not disclose when he expects Unit 3 to be back in service. The NRC also said it would not provide information on the unit’s planned restart date.
The shutdown comes as Georgia is facing significant demand for power during a scorching summer, but Hawkins said the company does not anticipate any issues meeting demand. The two new reactors combined produce enough electricity to serve 1 million homes, split among its four co-owners. Georgia Power owns the largest share in the Vogtle expansion with 45.7%, followed by Oglethorpe Power (30%), the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (22.7%) and Dalton Utilities (1.6%).
Unit 3 has been online since last July, when it made history as the first new nuclear reactor built from scratch in the U.S. in more than three decades. It’s twin, Unit 4, entered service in April, completing the expansion of the nuclear power plant and making Vogtle the country’s largest generator of carbon-free electricity, according to Georgia Power.
Vogtle is also home to two older nuclear reactors, Units 1 and 2, which have been in operation since the late 1980s. Only Unit 3 is impacted by the current outage.
The technical glitch comes about six weeks after Georgia Power and the units’ other co-owners welcomed state and federal leaders, including Gov. Brian Kemp and U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, to the plant for victory lap celebrations of the Vogtle expansion’s completion.
Building Vogtle’s two new reactors was a costly endeavor that was dogged by construction quality issues and other problems, and ultimately reached completion roughly seven years later than initially forecast.
The project’s total price tag also blew past the original cost estimate of $14 billion to around $35 billion. Most of Georgia Power’s portion of those costs have — and will continue to — come out of the pockets of its customers.
The full brunt of the rate increases to pay for the reactors recently hit Georgia Power ratepayers’ bills, leading to a sharp increase for many. For the average residential ratepayer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a month, Vogtle’s costs will have raised their monthly bill by about $14.38, with larger increases likely for those using more electricity.
Georgia Power also charges significantly more for electricity during the summer months, when demand is higher as homes and businesses try to stay cool.
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