The latest Plant Vogtle project update has been uploaded to YouTube. The ongoing work in Georgia is now one-third complete. But it's becoming a bit of a slog.
Predictably, since the plant features a new reactor design never before built in the U.S., including new safety systems, delays have pushed back the completion timeline from April 2017 to late 2018, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
In February, the Southern Co. also said it would exceed its original budget and asked regulators to pony up another $737 million, $381 million for construction and the rest for financing.
As the update makes clear, this huge project is a slave to logistics. Since the reactor technology has been sourced from all over the world, during the video, huge pieces of equipment shipped to the port of Savannah from South Korea arrive at the construction site by train and truck. Also, using a precaution fairly unique to this project, much of the construction undergoes trial-runs on scaled down mock sites to ensure everything is done according to plan.
Still the video shows major construction milestones have been reached, beginning with the placement of the first nuclear island concrete on Unit 3 to create the six-foot-thick basemat. There's also a lot of activity around the cooling towers, where the x-braces, or "legs," are put into place at the rate of one a day. More construction photos here.