With Just 1 Plant Under Construction, Nuclear Renaissance Stalls

Posted August 7, 2017

External Article: WABE FM 90.1

 Marilyn Brown, professor in the School of Public Policy was quoted in “With Just 1 Plant Under Construction, Nuclear Renaissance Stalls” for WABE FM 90.1.

Excerpt:

A decade ago, utility executives and policymakers dreamed of a clean energy future powered by a new generation of cheap, safe nuclear reactors. Projects to expand existing nuclear plants in South Carolina and Georgia were supposed to be the start of the "nuclear renaissance." But following the decision last week by two utilities to scrap the expansion at the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in South Carolina, that vision is in tatters. There's now just one nuclear expansion project left in the country, its future is also uncertain … With encouragement from the federal government, utilities around the country began applying for permission to build new reactors. At Vogtle in Georgia and V.C. Summer in South Carolina, power companies got to work. “I thought it was going to be a very good thing for the Southern economy,” says Marilyn Brown, a public policy professor at Georgia Tech and board member of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which operates three older nuclear power plants in Alabama and Tennessee … According to Brown, “that meant if you went back to reappraise the nuclear investments, they probably would not have been approved, or might not have been approved.”

For the full article, read here.