Tens of thousands of Georgians were disconnected from the power grid due the sharp price increases this year, Patty Durand said.
An Australian parliamentary committee has heard that the cost blowouts of two nuclear power reactors have caused significant electricity price hikes in Georgia, the United States.
At a recent inquiry hearing into nuclear power, Patty Durand, the president of Cool Planet Solutions, a Georgia-based energy consulting company, shared her insight on the negative impacts of building nuclear reactors in her state.
According to Durand, Georgia completed two AP1000 nuclear reactors for Plant Vogtle, a four-unit nuclear power plant, in the summer of 2023 and April 2024, respectively, after over a decade of construction.
The budget was initially estimated to be US$11 billion (AU$16.9 billion), but by the time construction was finished, it had ballooned to US$36 billion.
The president said the price tag for two nuclear reactors that could produce around 2,200 megawatts was “ridiculous.”
“The total cost of these two reactors is $36 billion, an astonishing amount of money for one state to spend on one power plant,” she told the Select Committee on Nuclear Energy.
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