Licences granted for two new nuclear reactors in US

Malaysia Sun Thursday 9th February, 2012

NEW YORK - After three decades, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Thursday granted licences to a consortium of utilities led by a Fortune 500 company Southern Co to build two new nuclear reactors in Georgia.

It was a divided federal panel that approved the granting of licences to build the new reactors.

Major opposition came from NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko who felt more study need to be done on the safeguards in the wake of many nuclear accidents, particularly Japan's Fukushima disaster last year.

"I cannot support this licensing as if Fukushima never happened," Jaczko is reported to have said.

The last time NRC issued a licence for setting up a new reactor was in 1978, a year before the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania.

The new reactors will be set up in the Vogtle nuclear power plant complex, 273 km from Atlanta, which already has two reactors.

To be set up at a cost of $14 billion, the new reactors are a Westinghouse design called the AP 1000. The two nuclear reactors are expected to generate 2,200 megawatts of power, according to a spokesman for Southern Co.

The Department of Energy is to provide conditional $8.3 billion loan guarantee.

The first reactor is scheduled to be commissioned by 2016 and the second one a year later, according to Southern Co.

Several anti-nuclear groups are proposing to challenge the NRC decision in the federal court on the grounds that the nuclear reactor design selected lacks adequate safeguards.

The Obama administration has however offered its support for the nuclear power programme.

Approval for the Southern Co led consortium is expected to encourage more projects to move forward. Nuclear power currently constitutes 20 per cent of power generation in the US.