Georgia Power Extends Vogtle ‘Interim Assessment’ Agreement With Westinghouse

1 May (NucNet): Georgia Power, the company building two new nuclear reactor units at the Vogtle nuclear site in Georgia, has extended an “interim assessment” agreement with plant supplier Westinghouse that will allow work to continue until 12 May 2017, the company said in a statement on 28 April 2017. During this time, the parties will try to finalise a new service agreement which would, if necessary, assure that Westinghouse continues to provide design, engineering and procurement services to Southern Nuclear while Southern is assuming control over management of the project. Georgia Power is a subsidiary of Southern Nuclear. Westinghouse, the US-based nuclear unit of Japan’s Toshiba, filed for bankruptcy protection in the US in March. Toshiba said in February 2017 that it expects to book a loss of about $6.2bn (€5.7bn) from Westinghouse in the third quarter of fiscal year 2016. The expected write-down was caused largely by an overestimation of projects at CB&I Stone & Webster, a US nuclear construction company bought by Westinghouse in January 2016. There have also been reported cost overruns and delays relating to the construction of AP1000s at Vogtle, and at Summer in South Carolina. There are two Westinghouse AP1000 units under construction at each site.