, Columnist
Nuclear Power’s Big Problem Isn’t That It’s Nuclear
It’s out of step with the times, as an expensive Southern Co. project makes clear.
Too big, too expensive.
Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty Images EuropeThis article is for subscribers only.
Southern Co. has snatched defeat from the jaws of a different kind of defeat.
On Wednesday, its subsidiary, Georgia Power Co., reached an eleventh-hour agreement with the three other owners of the Vogtle nuclear construction project to move forward with it. One of them, Oglethorpe Power Corp., had earlier demanded a cap on the risk of further cost increases, prompting a sharply worded press release from its, er, partners (“Oglethorpe Power is using the vote to try to burden others with its obligations ...”).
