Georgia Power today announced in a filing with the Georgia Public Service Commission the completion of the latest round of milestones at the Vogtle nuclear expansion project, along with an update on the remaining Unit 3 major milestones. 

The filing supports the company’s 23^rd Vogtle Construction Monitoring (VCM) Report that covers the period January 1, 2020, through June 30, 2020, and can be found here. The filing provides the project’s current status of construction, systems testing, and pre-operational activities. Earlier this week, Vogtle Unit 3 completed cold hydro testing. Unit 3 construction is now approximately 94% complete. The site now shifts its focus to one of the last major milestones remaining for Unit 3, hot functional testing. This series of tests is the last critical step before fuel load and ultimately in-service operation.

For the past three years, the project has been following an aggressive site working plan as a tool to build schedule margin to and ultimately meet the November 2021 regulatory-approved in-service date for Unit 3. Considering the milestone progress to date and stage of construction completion, the project is shifting its Unit 3 schedule from an aggressive tool to a working plan that is reflective of the site’s current expectations. The Unit 3 working plan now reflects the site’s current expectations for upcoming milestones, taking into account experience, trends, and assumptions for future productivity, ongoing measures necessary due to COVID-19, and the transition from a construction site to an operating plant and are as follows:

• Start of hot functional test: January 2021

• Fuel load: April 2021

• In-service: Third quarter 2021

Georgia Power continues to expect to meet its commitment to achieve the regulatory-approved in-service dates for both Units (November 2021 for Unit 3 and November 2022 for Unit 4). For Unit 3, Georgia Power expects hot functional testing can start as late as the end of March 2021, and fuel load can occur as late as mid-year 2021 to allow the site to meet the November regulatory-approved in-service date. The project continues to employ an aggressive site work plan for Unit 4 as a tool to build schedule margin to and ultimately meet the November 2022 regulatory-approved in-service date, with the in-service date under the plan adjusting one month to June 2022.