Cooling towers and reactors 3 and 4 can be seen in the nuclear-powered Vogtle Electric generation plants in Waynesboro, Georgia, USA, August 13, 2024.
Megan Varner | Reuters
New reactors in Georgia and South Carolina with large power plants in Georgia and South Carolina should trigger a “nuclear renaissance” in the United States after a generation that is not missing new buildings.
Instead, the state-of-the-art AP1000 design of Westinghouse Electric Co. led to long delays and strong overruns that culminated in its bankruptcy in 2017. The case of Westinghouse was a big one in the dawn of the nuclear age. It was Westinghouse that in 1957 entered the first reactor for the commercial service in the USA in Schipport, Pennsylvania.
Vogtle near Augusta, Georgia, started two new AP1000 reactors in 2023 and 2024, converted the work into the largest location of all kinds in the country and marked the first new operational nuclear reactive design for 30 years. But the reactors came behind the schedule for seven years and $ 18 billion over the budget online.
After the bankruptcy of Westinghouse, the supply companies in South Carolina 2017 in VC summer work near Columbia stopped building in 2017 after they had entered 9 billion US dollars into the project.
Today, interest in new nuclear power is revived because the technology sector is looking for reliable, carbon -free electricity to supply its ambitions for artificial intelligence, especially against China. Westinghouse was created from bankruptcy in 2018 and was acquired in November 2023 by Canadian Uranium Miner Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management.
The changed environment means that South Carolina sees the opportunity to end the two reactors that are partially built eight years ago in VC summer. The state's public utility company Santee Cooper of the state began in January with the search for a buyer for the location to end the reactor construction and named the request of the data center as one of the reasons to advance.
“We are extremely optimistic in the case of VC Summer,” said Dan Lipman, President of Energy Systems at Westinghouse, in an interview with CNBC. “We believe that the completion of this asset is of crucial importance, feasible and economical, and we will do everything to support Santee Cooper and the state of South Carolina in implementing a decision that leads to the end of the location.”
Technology as a nuclear catalyst
The United States has tried to revive nuclear power for a quarter of a century, but the two reactors in Georgia mark the only completely new building during this time, even though he has supported George W. Bush to Donald Trump among two parties.
A fresh start should have started more than a decade ago, but was suffocated by a wave of closures of older reactors when Nuclear fought to compete against a cheap natural gas that was created by the slate revolution.
“We have drawn from an environment in the areas of rising gas imports and rising gas prices to fracking technology to open up some affordable natural gas here in the US estimates. ” said John Kotek from the Kernergieinstitut, an industrial lobby group and former deputy secretary at the office for nuclear power under President Barack Obama.
What is different in 2025 is the insatiable appetite of the tech sector on electricity, which is implemented in willingness to pay a bonus for nuclear. However, the latest investments in nuclear focused on the restart of abandoned reactors and an attempt to bring modular reactors of the next generation, many of which believe that they are the future when they can be designed and built cheaper.
The restless nuclear power plant in Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which was almost melted in 1979 Constellation energy a electricity acceptance contract with Microsoft Last September. The constellation wants to restart unit 1, which will be closed in 2019 for economic reasons, not the reactor of unity 2, which was the place of the accident.
alphabet And Amazon invested in small nuclear reactors a month later. Meta platforms, In December, owners of Facebook and Instagram asked developers to submit proposals for up to 4 gigawatts of new nuclear power in order to meet the energy requirements of its data centers.
Although the recent focus in the USA was on restart and marketing small reactors, Lipman said that the extent of the potential demand that resulted from data centers last year led to a new interest in Westinghouse reactive design of Westinghouse.
In any case, there are no operational small reactors in the United States today, although startups and industry talks, including Westinghouse, commercialize technology. And only so many closed plants in the USA in good enough shape to possibly be restarted.
Gigantuan companies
In the meantime, it is a gigantic company to satisfy the demand for power. For example, Meta's need for new nuclear power corresponds to almost the total 4.8 gigawatt of the generation capacity in the Vogtle plant, which supply sufficient more than 2 million houses and companies with electricity. Large nuclear power plants with a gigawatt or more capacity – the size of the AP1000 – becomes its ministry for energy report for the power supply of large industrial locations such as data centers.
Brian Kemp, Governor of Georgia, called for another reactor at Vogtle on the same day when he dedicated the expansion expansion in May 2024. Southern Company CEO Chris Womack believes that at least 10 gigawatts are required. Southern is the parent company of Georgia Power, which operates Vogtle.
“The people who traditionally own and operate AP1000s are in the possession of investors,” said Lipman. “If you look at the market for a large reactor, AP1000 is where you turn because it has a license, it is ready for operation.”
Nevertheless, nobody in the USA is about to sign an arrangement for a new AP1000, he said. Westinghouse focuses on the use of reactors in Eastern and Central Europe, where nuclear projects are regarded as a national security condition in order to counteract the dependence on Russian natural gas according to the invasion of Ukraine.
FileToto: In this file photo on September 21, 2016, the VC Summer Nuclear Station TWO is located in the construction of Jenkinsville, SC, during a media trip through the facility.
Chuck Burton | AP
In addition to the two units in Georgia, Westinghouse also has four operative reactors in China.
The search for South Carolina for someone who has completed the partially built reactors in VC Summer will probably build investments from Big Tech “Hypercalers”, and large manufacturers such as the auto industry, said Lipman.
“This type of asset attracts the industry, which is dependent on 24/7, 365 energy, and that's what you get with an AP1000,” said Lipman. In the industry, there are ongoing discussions about whether the technology sector could act as a developer that invests capital in the preliminary paying costs of building new facilities, he said.
What went wrong in the south
Any attempt to build new AP1000s in the USA will almost certainly meet South Carolina and Georgia with skepticism.
Lipman said the challenges that the AP1000 building faces in the south were solved. At that time, Westinghouse agreed to the projects before the reactor design was completed, and the supply chains were not completely shaped due to a long period of time in which the construction of the US construction was resting, he said.
“A large lesson he has learned, perhaps the great lesson that has to be completed before they are on the field, which means they have to be ready,” said Lipman. The design for the AP1000 is complete and Westinghouse has its supply chain, he said.
“We won our list of suppliers,” said Lipman. “They support us worldwide and it is very easy to make them more devices for use.”
“You get scale effects,” he said.
Ironically, the original goal of AP1000, in view of the exceedance in Georgia, was the costs by creating a standardized design that requires less building material compared to older reactor types, says Lipman. Components of the system are prefabricated on site before it is put together on site, he said.
“They basically gather modular kit-like, main parts of the system, a bit like aircraft and submarines,” said Lipman. “That was not completely shaken on the Vogtle site.”
In a report in September, the Ministry of Energy under the bidet management argued that future AP1000 builds should be cheaper because they do not incur any costs in connection with the unique project in Georgia. The support of the department of the department, tax credits within the framework of the Inflation Reduction Act and shorter construction schedule would significantly reduce the costs according to the report.
Trump plans for nuclear
While President Donald Trump supports Nuclear, it is unclear whether the industry will receive support from DOE loans and the investment tax credit as part of the Inflation Redutation Act (IRA). These tools were columns of the bidet management plan to reduce the costs for new AP1000s.
At his first office, Trump gave an executive order to remove obstacles to the development of nuclear energy resources. However, the same arrangement made all expenses under the IRA. Two weeks later, the Minister of Energy Chris Wright made the commercialized “affordable and abundant nuclear energy” in an order on February 5th.
“The long -spoken Nuclear Renaissance will finally happen, for me personally and for President Trump and this administration, it is a priority,” Wright told CNBC in an interview on February 7. Wright was previously a board member of Ok HeyA nuclear startup that aims to disturb the status quo of the industry later by using microreactors this decade.
Wright emphasized the marketing of small reactors and said that private capital would push ahead with the construction of new plants. Before the elections in November, Trump was skeptical of building large reactors and quoted the canceled project in South Carolina.
“They are getting too big and too complex and too expensive,” he said Joe Rogan in an interview in October.
Lipman said the first Trump government was pro-nuclear and he expects the president to support the industry in his second term.
“If it becomes scaled the use of gigawatt in the United States, the decision -making process must accelerate,” said Lipman. “The business model, the investment climate, all legislative changes that could be at the state or federal level is now the time to address these relevant questions.”
– Gabriel Cortes from CNBC contributed to this report.