Liam Denning, 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 Europe
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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 ...”).