The US Department of Energy (DoE) announced it will offer conditional loan guarantees worth US$3.7bn to support the construction of the two Vogtle-3 and Vogtle-4 nuclear reactors at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant (near Waynesboro, Georgia, US). The funds will be allocated to the plant owners: US$1.67bn will be assigned to Georgia Power Company (GPC, a subsidiary of Southern Power Company), US$1.67bn to Oglethorpe Power Corporation (OPC) and US$415m to three affiliates of Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (MEAG Power). In the past, the DoE already guaranteed a combined value of US$8.3bn in loans to GPC, OPC, and MEAG Power, which brings the total current amount of state support up to US$12bn.
The Vogtle plant has two operating pressurized water reactors manufactured by Westinghouse rated 1,215 MW each, which were commissioned in 1987 and 1989. It is jointly owned by GPC (45.7%), OPC (30%), the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (22.7%) and Dalton Utilities (1.6%). As per the expansion project, Georgia Power and Southern Nuclear will build two AP1000 units, Vogtle-3 and Vogtle-4, rated 1,117 MW each. According to the current plan, GPC schedules the Vogtle-3 and Vogtle-4 units to reach commercial operation in November 2021 and November 2022 respectively.
In September 2017, GPC filed a recommendation with the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) to continue the construction of the project and estimates that its project total completion costs are likely to top US$25bn.
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