What Georgia’s Plant Vogtle teaches us about New York’s nuclear ambitions

Image of Plant Vogtle courtesy of High & Low Flyer (c) 2024

This opinion editorial by former Plant Vogtle Construction Monitor Don Grace was originally published on November 13, 2025 in Crain’s New York, available here.

Just over a year ago, Georgia completed building two new reactors at Plant Vogtle, making Georgia the first  state to build new reactors in over 30 years. Now that data centers are expanding to serve the needs of artificial intelligence and electrification, there are calls for rapid construction of new nuclear generation, specifically in New York State. But there’s a cautionary tale to be learned for those seeking to build the next nuclear reactor.

New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul announced in June that she was directing the New York Power Authority, the state’s public utility company, to construct a new nuclear facility somewhere upstate with the power capacity of roughly 1000MW, similar to the amount of power produced by the NRC-approved Westinghouse AP1000 reactor used at Plant Vogtle. 

Now, Governor Hochul has requested the Trump administration fast track the new plant, opening the door for New York to greenlight the first nuclear reactor since Plant Vogtle, which was approved for construction in 2012.   

Based on my intimate knowledge of Georgia’s Plant Vogtle project, I believe political enthusiasm for nuclear power as a panacea to our energy needs is misplaced. As a nuclear engineering professional with decades of experience and the Vogtle Construction Monitor for the recently completed reactors, I authored over a dozen reports on the progress and problems of Vogtle in filings to the Georgia PSC and testimony before the commission. In Georgia, energy generated by the new reactors cost $160/MWh, or five times more than the $30/MWh price point at which most utilities can generate electricity. Georgia’s residential ratepayers are now burdened with a 25% rate increase for a modest amount of electricity generated by the new reactors for Georgia Power’s share of the project.

It’s naïve to believe lessons learned from constructing Vogtle’s new reactors will reduce costs for the next ones because the ‘first of a kind’ is always more expensive. Yet Vogtle’s reactor design, the AP1000, is not the first of a kind – it’s a basic pressurized water reactor, a technology from the 1950s where the reactor’s core is cooled by water circulated using electrically powered pumps. There are some nuclear designs underway such as molten salt reactors or small modular reactors which are new, but these designs will not carry any reduced costs from lessons learned from Vogtle.

Even if the next reactor design is similar to Vogtle, the cost to construct the AP1000 reactor was only one of many factors for cost overruns.  A drop in natural gas prices prompted the cancellation of 12 of the originally planned 14 AP1000 reactors, which then resulted in the abandonment of the modular facility which was meant to supply common modules to the plants. Hampered by the lack of experienced nuclear construction labor and an inability to properly manage completion of the project, the construction contractor ultimately declared bankruptcy. 

However, even if natural gas prices hadn’t decreased, the $36 billion cost and 15-year timeline, even if improved 30%, means that nuclear generation is still far more expensive and slower to deliver than any other solution. Georgia’s new reactors support the case that nuclear energy is the only energy technology that has never gotten cheaper over time.

Seventeen years after the Plant Vogtle expansion project first was licensed, it’s clear that new nuclear is not a panacea. The staggering and ever-increasing costs, prolonged construction timeline, and significant burden on ratepayers reveal a technology that commercially speaking, remains fundamentally flawed. And that’s not even touching on the safety and long-term waste storage concerns raised by building new reactors.

The story of Plant Vogtle is not a tale of technological triumph, but a cautionary narrative for states like New York seeking to build a new nuclear reactor. If there are no limits to what is spent, anything can be completed. Until the nuclear industry can demonstrate true cost-effectiveness and technological innovation, it will remain a costly burden for ratepayers and a distraction from the work that is needed to meet our future energy needs. Don Grace served as the Plant Vogtle Construction Monitor from 2017 to 2024, providing oversight and testifying semi-annually before the Georgia PSC. 

Don Grace served as the Plant Vogtle Construction Monitor from 2017 to 2024, providing oversight and testifying semi-annually before the Georgia PSC. 

Small Modular Reactors, Carbon Capture: The wrong resources for Colorado’s energy transition was published in October 2025 by David Schlissel and Dennis Wamsted with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). Find the November 6, 2025 webinar recording below, David Schlissel’s powerpoint on Small Modular Reactors here, and Dennis Wamsted’s powerpoint on natural gas with carbon capture here.

Finally Some Accountability for Georgia’s Costly Nuclear Power Mistake

By Kim Scott

The story of Plant Vogtle’s two new nuclear reactors in Georgia is not a triumph of a “nuclear renaissance”; it’s a cautionary tale written in soaring electric bills and a growing political fallout. The people of Georgia are paying the price, literally, as their utility bills have skyrocketed by over 40% – and now, following last Tuesday’s Public Service Commission election in Georgia, it seems those that allowed this to happen in the first place are starting to feel the pinch as well. It’s about damn time! 

Georgia voters delivered a stunning message by unseating two Republican utility commissioners, Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson, who rubber stamped and championed the costly mistakes leading to a 41% increase in Georgians’ electric bills. This election, which saw Democrats Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard championing fair rates, affordability and renewable energy, was a clear referendum on Plant Vogtle’s enormous price tag and more importantly, nuclear power as a not so clean future power resource both here in Georgia and elsewhere. 

The stunning defeat of utility backed incumbents sends a powerful signal to utility regulators nationwide that consumers will not tolerate being forced to pay for multi-billion-dollar nuclear boondoggles. If they aren’t paying attention, Wall Street sure is, downgrading Southern Co.’s stock immediately following the election, citing the increased risk and the new difficulty the company will face in pushing through further rate hikes to pay for Plant Vogtle and other projects in their pipeline. Georgia customers will pay an additional $36 billion to $43 billion over the 60-80 year lifespan of the two Vogtle reactors compared to cheaper alternatives. 

Vogtle stands as the only new nuclear reactor built in the last 30 years, and its fallout offers a bleak prognosis for any supposed “renaissance” and its supporters in statehouses across the country. We can look back to 2017 when the main contractor, Westinghouse, filed for bankruptcy due to the extreme cost overruns at Vogtle. At that critical moment, the Georgia PSC ignored its own staff, energy experts, and public outcry, choosing to burden ratepayers with the project’s continuation.

The consequences of those decisions, subsequent rate increases and soaring electric bills are not abstract—they are impacting the most vulnerable among us and the most overlooked i.e. middle class/working class Georgians. Disconnection rates for the inability to pay have soared by 30% in 2024. For retirees on fixed incomes, the rate increases to pay for Plant Vogtle mean the difference between making ends meet and falling into destitution. This summer, when brutal heat waves descended, vulnerable Georgians had their power shut off, creating life-threatening conditions because they could no longer afford to cool their homes.

The ratepayer backlash in Georgia is also being fueled by the projected massive energy demands of AI data centers, which are forcing utilities like Southern Co. to reckon with costly new generation and transmission projects. Instead of aggressively pushing nuclear power—as evidenced by the Trump administration’s recent $80 billion deal to buy reactors from Westinghouse, the same company bankrupted by Vogtle—we must demand that elected politicians focus on fast and affordable energy solutions like solar and battery energy storage systems. 

The painful lesson learned in Georgia is that new nuclear power is simply too expensive and takes too long. The reality is that for half the cost and in less than a quarter of the time, we could have built more than twice the capacity using solar, wind, or battery storage technologies. But corruption won out and Vogtle is here for the foreseeable future. Georgians will be paying for this mistake for decades to come… I’m just glad there’s finally some accountability headed our way.

Kim Scott is Executive Director of Georgia WAND, is a native Georgian, and has a Chemical Engineering degree from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.