Contractors file $900M suit over nuclear reactors

[bananas]

Source: Associated Press

The contractors building two nuclear reactors in eastern Georgia have filed a lawsuit seeking more than $900 million from Southern Co. and other plant owners.

The suit filed Thursday in a federal court in Washington is the third between the parties over the construction of Plant Vogtle near Augusta. It is the first nuclear plant in a generation to win approval to build from scratch.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the firms designing and building the plant — Westinghouse Electric Co. and the Shaw Group — want more compensation for additional design work that was necessary before the reactor could be approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They also want compensation for what they call the owner’s failure to get a key construction license before July 1, 2012.

Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power owns a nearly 46 percent stake in the new plant and oversees the project on behalf of co-owners Oglethorpe Power Corp., the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and Dalton Utilities. Georgia Power has previously said the contractors wanted $425 million as its share of the extra costs, though the utility denies any responsibility for those charges.

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Read more: http://mdjonline.com/view/full_story/20710470/article-Contractors-file--900M-suit-over-nuclear-reactors

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Hopefully this boondoggle will be abandoned before they waste too much more money on it.

[madrchsod]

1. i read about these plants before construction was started

the estimated cost for these plants were in the range of 15-20 billion and the insurance would be cared by the consumers because no insurance company would insure these reactors.

that`s some dam expensive electricity.....

[Chemisse]

2. But nuclear power will be "Too cheap to meter"

Whoever said that decades ago was as wrong as it is possible to be.

[madokie]

3. Yes and on so many levels

Lewis Strauss

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter

Too cheap to meter describes a concept in which a commodity is so inexpensive that it is more cost-effective and less bureaucratic to simply provide it for a flat fee or even free and make a profit from associated services.

Although sometimes attributed to Walter Marshall, a pioneer of nuclear power in the United Kingdom,[1] the phrase was coined by Lewis Strauss, then Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, who in a 1954 speech to the National Association of Science Writers said:

"Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter... It is not too much to expect that our children will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age."[2]

It is often (understandably but erroneously) assumed that Strauss' prediction was a reference to conventional uranium fission nuclear reactors. Indeed, only ten days prior to his “Too Cheap To Meter” speech, Strauss was present for the groundbreaking of the Shippingport Atomic Power Station where he predicted that, "industry would have electrical power from atomic furnaces in five to fifteen years." However, Strauss was actually referring to hydrogen fusion power and Project Sherwood, which was conducting secret research on developing practical fusion power plants

[jenw2]

4. The comment you worked in about dams...

is just wrong. They're horrible.