Fate of US nuclear future now hinges on Georgia utility

Bloomberg

With a multibillion-dollar
nuclear project in South Carolina dead, the fate of America’s nuclear renaissance now rests on one utility: Southern Co.
Scana Corp dropped plans for two reactors Monday, leaving the two that Southern is building at the Vogtle plant in Georgia as the only ones under construction in the US. And even they are under threat: The utility had to take over management of the project from its bankrupt contractor Westinghouse Electric Co., and the plant is still years behind schedule and billions over budget. Now it must decide whether to finish them.
Southern calling it quits could prove to be the final nail in the coffin for the long-awaited US nuclear renaissance that has failed to materialize in the aftermath of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident. In 2012, Southern and Scana became the first companies to gain approval to build U.S. reactors in more than 30 years — only to find themselves in troubling times for the industry. On top of construction setbacks and ballooning costs, nuclear plants are reeling under intense competition from cheap natural gas and renewables that have spurred states led by New York to go as far as offering
subsidies for existing reactors to keep them open.
“I’ve thought all along that Southern would walk away,” Kit Konolige, a New York-based analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, said by phone. The abandonment of the South Carolina project increases the chances of that happening since “it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to keep going,” he said.