The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 4 to 1 today to approve construction of the first new U.S. nuclear power plant in more than three decades, with the agency chairman casting the lone "no" vote for safety concerns.

Four commissioners -- two Democrats and two Republicans -- agreed to issue a construction and operation license to a consortium of utilities led by Southern Co. for two nuclear reactors at the Vogtle nuclear power plant complex about 170 miles east of Atlanta.

Construction of the $14 billion reactors could begin as soon as the license is issued -- in about 10 days, NRC spokesman Scott Burnell said.

Georgia Power, subsidiary of Southern; Oglethorpe Power; MEAG Power; and Dalton Utilities are building the reactors. They expect Unit 3 to be operational by 2016 and Unit 4 by 2017.

NRC last approved a construction permit in 1978 for Progress Energy's Shearon Harris nuclear power plant near Raleigh, N.C. There are currently 104 operating reactors that provide about 20 percent of the nation's power.

Construction of the new reactors is being helped by a conditional $8.3 billion loan guarantee from the Energy Department that has been pending since February 2010. Georgia Power says that guarantee could save its customers up to $20 million.

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said the commission has no "binding" agreement with the companies to ensure they will make safety upgrades related to the disaster last year at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex. Three reactors there experienced core meltdown after the facility was struck by a magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami that wiped out power to the plant.

Jaczko said that the commission is still acting on safety recommendations from an internal NRC task force and that he could not give his approval and act "as if Fukushima never happened."

The four commissioners disagreed with their chairman. Republican Commissioner Kristine Svinicki said that there is no "amnesia, individually or collectively," about what happened in Japan and that the agency has a tested regulatory system in place to ensure the task force recommendations are crafted and imposed on the industry.

Commissioner Bill Magwood, a Democrat, said that there is nothing gained by stopping work and that he is confident NRC can ensure nuclear power plant operators will make the appropriate safety upgrades. He said the Vogtle reactors would usher a "new era of enhanced nuclear safety" and praised their high-tech, passive safety systems for cooling the reactors during an emergency.

Today's vote reflected deep divisions on the panel. Late last year, Jaczko's fellow commissioners complained to the White House of his management style, saying he berated female employees and tried to control information meant for the entire panel. Jaczko denied those accusations, and Democrats accused the four commissioners of trying to stymie Jaczko's pro-safety stance.

Reactions

Marvin Fertel, the Nuclear Energy Institute's president and CEO, said in a statement that the coalition of utilities is building the reactors under an improved licensing process that "exhaustively addresses safety considerations" and lessons learned from the industry's licensing and construction experience.

He also applauded the Advanced Passive 1000 reactor design for taking safety "to the highest level in U.S. history."

The AP1000 reactor, a Westinghouse Electric Co. design, is a 1,100-megawatt electric pressurized-water reactor with a passive design system for cooling the plant during an emergency.

The AP1000 is the newest reactor design to receive NRC approval, and Southern's reactors would be the first built in the United States, although four are under construction in China (Greenwire, Dec. 22).

David Wright, president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, said construction of new plants has waned because of low natural gas prices and the recession, but new reactors need to be built if the United States is to have any kind of new-build.

"Once the economy picks back up and the economy starts to improve, you're going to see base-load needs increase, and that's when you'll see more plants," he said.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Nuclear Safety, also applauded the decision. "Most of our nuclear power plants are 30 to 40 years old," he said in a statement. "As our nuclear plants age, we must start thinking about how we will replace our nuclear fleet in the not-so-distant future."

But Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jaczko's former boss, accused the four commissioners of slow-walking post-Fukushima safety upgrades.

"Today, the NRC abdicated its duty to protect public health and safety just to make construction faster and cheaper for the nuclear industry," Markey said in a statement.

Paul Gunter, of the reactor oversight project of nuclear-industry foe Beyond Nuclear, said the decision will have ripple effects on the company, like negative credit ratings. He also said Jaczko's opinion will be a crucial point in upcoming legal battles.

"Any dissenting opinion in this issuance of the permit is going to bear very heavily in the public interest opposition and legal intervention," he said.

Lawsuits

Nine anti-nuclear groups said yesterday that they will file a lawsuit in a federal appeals court. They argue that the commission failed to incorporate lessons learned from Japan's nuclear crisis last year, including the need for backup power in the event of natural disasters and loss of power, and the potential for multiple reactors to be damaged on one site (Greenwire, Feb. 24).

Fertel told a group of investment bankers in midtown Manhattan today it is unclear what the court will do, but no lawsuit has ever stopped construction of a nuclear power plant. "We think the probability of a lawsuit resulting in an injunction is extremely low," he said (see related story).

Criticism is also mounting against DOE's loan guarantee for Southern's construction and the AP1000 reactor design.

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy is suing DOE for failing to disclose information about the loan guarantee. DOE has said the information the groups are seeking is proprietary and not available to the public (Greenwire, Feb. 6).

Reporter Colin Sullivan contributed.