The majority of the this is extremist Republican Ideology: How the Republication's control Nuclear Power and the NRC.
These projects would have been a hell of a lot cheaper if they were totally prepare from the get go. The truth is the gigantic construction was too big for even the largest utility. It has always been this way. The industry should have been more involved in this project. Each plant should have sent a few very educated and skilled employees to Vogtle and Summer. They should have sent a army of utility employee ants to monitor this project just like they did in the TMI meltdown. Only the government is big enough and powerful enough to ever attempt such a huge project.
There is no reason, because of the powerlessness of the NRC...Vogtle in unlike Summer. The huge Southern company is just very good at hiding their flaws and controlling the NRC...
So here goes the big utilities with their decades long explanation with what happened in Vogtle and Summer. The utilizes were just too incompetent with managing the earlier new build programs. The nuclear designs were incomplete in the 1970s, just like today. Basically, the public of the times were mistrustful(Vietnam and Watergate) of government. Some of it was focused on the nuclear industry and all there terrible accidents. The public was hot, they made the NRC do their jobs. It wasn't a voluntary action. So the NRC mandated changes of designs.
Exelon CEO and Officials: Mouthpiece of Nuclear Industry and Best Truth Disruptor They Ever had
No new nuclear units will be built in US due to high cost: Exelon official
Washington (Platts)--12 Apr 2018 554 pm EDT/2154 GMT
Due to their high cost relative to other generating options, no new nuclear power units will be built in the US, an Exelon official said Thursday.
As the nuclear renaissance came into view, they blamed all the troubles with 1970s new build on the NRC. This is how they defanged the NRC. It is a abomination with this arm of the government they didn't defend themselves in the setup of the Nuclear Renaissance with their troubles in the 1970s and 198os. It is like this regulatory agency participated in engineering their weakness in the face of the massive Nuclear Renaissance. It is utter insanity!!! It is a dire indication of how captured the NRC is today. Most troubling in the all of this, is the astonishing weakness in the feckless public involvement and in our news media. It is as if we all were captured by nuclear industry and their gigantic utility corporate interest. The citizens of the USA truly get what they deserve.
"The fact is -- and I don't want my message to be misconstrued in this part -- I don't think we're building any more nuclear plants in the United States. I don't think it's ever going to happen," William Von Hoene, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Exelon, told the US Energy Association's annual meeting in Washington. With 23 operational reactors, Exelon is the US' largest nuclear operator.
"I'm not arguing for the construction of new nuclear plants," Von Hoene said. "They are too expensive to construct, relative to the world in which we now live."
Nuclear power in the US "at this point is really a bridge to a different kind of carbon-free world," he said.
If the existing nuclear units in the US can be kept operational despite the economic challenges they face, and technology can be developed to store energy generated by renewable technologies, which are currently intermittently available, "then we won't need these [new nuclear units] at that point," Von Hoene said. "And we won't build them because they'll be too expensive."
"I think it's very unlikely that absent some extraordinary change in environment or technology, that any nuclear plants beyond the Vogtle plant [in Georgia] will be built in my lifetime, by any company," Von Hoene said in an interview at the meeting Thursday.
The two-unit expansion of Georgia Power's Vogtle nuclear plant has experienced first-of-a-kind design, licensing, procurement and construction delays, leading in part to the bankruptcy of main contractor Westinghouse. Georgia Power says Vogtle-3 and -4 will begin commercial operation in November 2021 and November 2022, respectively.
Von Hoene's stance includes so-called small modular reactors, or SMRs, and advanced designs, he said.
"Right now, the costs on the SMRs, in part because of the size and in part because of the security that's associated with any nuclear plant, are prohibitive," Von Hoene said.
"It's possible that that would evolve over time, and we're involved in looking at that technology," Von Hoene said. "Right now they're prohibitively expensive."
The US Department of Energy defines SMRs as reactors of less than 300 MW that are designed to be built in factories and shipped for installation as demand arises.
NuScale Power submitted its certification application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in January 2017 for an SMR design, and the agency accepted the application in March for a full technical review.
NuScale is targeting commercial operation of its first SMR for 2026 at the Idaho National Laboratory. Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) would own the plant, which would be operated by Energy Northwest. UAMPS has not yet decided whether it will construct the reactor.
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