Chamblee54

The Public Service Commission held a hearing recently about a nucler power plant the Georgia Power Company wants to build. The PSC wants The Southern Company (parent of Georgia Power) to be responsible for cost overruns at a proposed nuke plant. SoCo says that this would drive up the cost of borrowing money, and might cause the company to cut corners on safety…“It could impact maintenance decisions”.
A while back, the Legislature passed SB31, which allows the utility to charge customers for the cost of nuclear plants while they are being built. Apparently, this was not enough of a break for the utility.
You need to disable your BS detector when you discuss something with this much money involved. PG suspects that SoCo underestimated the costs of the reactors to get approval. Once they got started they were “too big to fail”. This project was planned before the recent fukushima nightmare, which will not lower costs.
As for “maintenance decisions”… this is one of the issues with nukes. PG suspects that nukes can be operated safely. To do so requires constant, non corrupt oversight by the government. This, and the big money involved, lead to the slogan Nuclear Power = Big Government . To be fair, the electric infrastructure of Georgia is a huge, expensive affair, and comes under the heading of Big Government.
PG has written about this issue one, two, three, four, five, six times. HT to Peach Pundit. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress .