The last surviving US Nuke Power Plant Project is DYING OF COVID-19! Dotard-land falling behind 3rd World Nigger-land!

[Tony Tan]

https://www.greentechmedia.com/arti...uctivity-of-vogtle-nuclear-plant-construction

Sole US Nuclear Plant Under Construction Plods on Despite Virus Infections
Workforce reduction and other safety measures are building a backlog at Southern Company’s much-delayed Plant Vogtle.
Julian Spector April 30, 2020

Workers install the "top head" on the containment vessel of Vogtle Unit 4 in March 2020. (Credit: Georgia Power)

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The modern American nuclear power industry is not known for its punctuality, but the spread of a tenacious virus certainly doesn't help.
Utility Southern Company reported Thursday that the "COVID-19 pandemic has impacted productivity levels and pace of activity completion" at Vogtle 3 and 4, the only nuclear power plant construction currently underway in the U.S. Southern Company subsidiary Georgia Power owns the largest stake in the project sited near Augusta, Georgia.
The company still expects the units to meet their latest in-service deadlines of November 2021 and 2022, and has not changed the project's forecast capital cost. Those timelines and costs are already years behind the initial schedule and billions of dollars over the original budget. Power Magazine has a helpful play-by-play of the reasons for that, including faulty rebar, mid-project design changes, faulty welds, multiple reshuffles of the construction contractor responsibility, and the bankruptcy of AP1000 reactor supplier Westinghouse.
Work at Unit 3 proceeded mostly according to plan through March, though a backlog of tasks started to accumulate. Halfway through April, the project cut its 9,000-person workforce by 20 percent to allow for better social distancing.
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At the time, 42 workers had tested positive for COVID-19 and 57 were waiting for test results, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. That number rose from six confirmed cases as of April 10.
Unit 3 has passed the 90 percent construction mark, Southern Company said, and under an aggressive work plan could enter service as early as May 2021. Unless, that is, COVID-19 intercepts it at the finish line.

Southern Company's electricity mix includes more low-carbon sources compared to a year ago. (Credit: Southern Company)
Coronavirus-related social distancing policies also hit the retail electricity business at Southern Company, which owns regulated utilities Alabama Power, Georgia Power and Mississippi Power. The most pronounced impact came during the week ending on April 17, when COVID-19 impacts pushed sales down by more than 10 percent.
In a scenario where stay-at-home orders lift by midsummer and the economy recovers slightly, 2020 retail sales would be down between 2 and 5 percent, the utility group estimated. That equates to $250 million to $400 million in missing base revenue; any extension of the distancing policies, or a persistent economic slowdown, would exacerbate the loss.
Southern Company's electricity mix has nudged in a cleaner direction so far in 2020. Coal generation dropped from 22 percent to 13 percent since 2019. Renewables rose from 12 percent to 18 percent, and gas nudged up from 50 to 52 percent.

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[Tony Tan]

https://www.inquirer.com/business/l...ng-coronavirus-workers-infected-20200408.html







More Limerick nuclear plant workers test positive for coronavirus; refueling to continue

by Andrew Maykuth, Updated: April 8, 2020

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Editor's Note

News about the coronavirus is changing quickly. The latest information can be found at inquirer.com/coronavirus



Exelon Generation said Wednesday that three nuclear plant workers have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since it took the Limerick Generating Station out of service for refueling March 27 — two since Friday — but the giant power plant is still on track to complete its maintenance turnaround early next week.

Of more than 1,000 workers involved with the refueling outage at Limerick’s Unit 1 reactor, 44 were quarantined because they may have come into contact with one of the infected workers or with infected people outside the plant, the company said in a statement Wednesday.


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About 23 of the quarantined workers show symptoms, said Val Arkoosh, the chair of the Montgomery County Commissioners. Of the three people who have tested positive since the project began, one was a regular employee and two were contractors, she said.

“As the outage winds down, the number of workers onsite will continue to decrease significantly and we will remain overly cautious in our criteria for quarantining, including all workers — symptomatic or not — who have had potential exposure at work or at home,” Exelon said in a statement.





The company announced on Friday that one worker had tested positive, and said that two more were flagged this week. The workers were sent home to recover. Since the illness takes several days to incubate before a patient displays symptoms, it’s uncertain if the workers were infected on site or had come into contact with somebody before the outage began.

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Two other Limerick staff members were diagnosed with coronavirus before the outage began but have not been on site since March 20.



About half the contracted workers are local and half come from out of state; specialists typically move like nomads among plants during the spring and autumn nuclear refueling seasons. Limerick is one of more than 30 reactors nationwide that are scheduled for refueling and maintenance outages this spring, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Antinuclear activists have protested the influx of so many workers during a public health crisis, and Montgomery County officials have raised concerns about Exelon’s decision to proceed with the refueling.

Exelon characterized the number of infections as low, and said they have not impaired plans to refuel Unit 1′s nuclear fuel, an annual maintenance event at the twin-unit site. Because of the pandemic, Exelon had pared back planned Unit 1 maintenance to only essential tasks to reduce people on site during the outage.

“Maintenance activities remain on track, the fuel has been loaded, and we have a full complement of highly skilled workers on site to reassemble the reactor and complete the necessary tests and inspections safely and effectively,” the company said.