A major moment in the US nuclear industry today.

Georgia Power Co. announced today that Unit 3 at Plant Vogtle, southeast of Augusta, Georgia, has completed testing and is sending power to the local grid reliably.

The Westinghouse AP-1000 Vogtle 3 nuclear unit is the first built-from-scratch reactor in the US for decades.

It is a “historic day” for Georgia, Commissioner, Georgia Public Service Commission Tim Echols tweeted from the plant on Monday.

At its full output, Unit 3 will power half a million homes and businesses across Georgia, Florida and Alabama.

Given the nature of the project, the first reactor built from scratch in decades, the unit startup was delayed, with significant cost overruns. 

“At what point should we have given up?,” Tim Echols said when asked about the costs and delays.

“We would have ignored the bigger trend we knew would eventually impact our fossil-dependent state. We would have sent 8000 craft labourers home with nothing to show. We would have to accept a failed effort. Instead, we finished it,” he said.

A fourth reactor is nearing completion and will be online in the near future.

The project is seen as a watershed moment in the US nuclear renaissance, with the US committing to major investments in carbon-free, baseload energy with incentives from the Federal Government. 

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act commits significant tax credits to nuclear power in the United States to spur more nuclear investment.  

Investments are also happening in Small Modular Reactor technology, we recently profiled a new startup promising to create micro-reactors, with tens of billions of dollars in sales deals in the pipeline.