Georgia Nuclear: Vogtle Unit 3 Is Sinking! [BREDL Petition]

What Does the Leaning Tower of Pisa Have In Common with the Vogtle Nuclear Reactor?

By The Fairewinds Crew

The famous tower in Pisa, Italy was designed to stand straight up, and like Vogtle, it began to lean during construction. During the ensuing years after construction, the Pisa tower continued to sink into the ground due to the inability of the failing foundation to sustain the tower’s heavy weight. It became known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Similarly, the Vogtle Unit 3 nuclear power plant was designed to be straight on its firm ‘basemat foundation’, which is designed with extra rebar and mathematical calculations to assure that the foundation can support an atomic reactor as heavy as the unique design of the AP1000 with 8-million-pounds of emergency cooling water sitting on top of the containment. 

Last month, Vogtle’s  owner, Sothern Nuclear Operating Company (SNC), tried to amend its operating license with information that had been kept secret from the public. When that now leaning wall was first built five years ago, SNC established a program to monitor the lack of stability in the foundation.  

Honestly, truth is stranger than fiction – you can’t make this stuff up!  Now we learn that the  Vogtle Unit 3 atomic power reactor is sinking into the red Georgia clay causing an inner wall to tilt!  Yes, this is the same Vogtle Unit 3 that is already billions of dollars over budget and at least 5-years behind schedule.

On Tuesday, May 12, 2020, the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League [BREDL] announced that part of the Vogtle Unit 3 nuclear power plant currently under construction in Waynesboro, Georgia, is sinking. According to BREDL’s press release, “In a legal action filed Monday with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the group called on regulators to revoke the plant’s license for false statements made by its owners, Southern Nuclear Operating Company. On May 11, BREDL filed a nineteen-page legal petition requesting a hearing before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on a License Amendment for Plant Vogtle’s Unit 3. The petition is supported by detailed, specific expert opinion.  Under rules of procedure, Southern Company has 25 days to respond.”

Fairewinds Associates, Inc Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen wrote an expert witness report submitted by BREDL to the NRC in which he said that Southern Nuclear Operating Company (SNC) chose not to disclose that the Vogtle Unit 3 foundation was sinking faster in the middle than at the edges, in the shape of a dish, causing internal walls to lean.   From our point of view, leaning walls may have created a tourist destination for the Tower in Pisa, however, a leaning tower and failing foundation at a nuke plant is a meltdown waiting to happen.

BREDL has informed the NRC that there must be an entire reevaluation of the seismic/structural integrity of the entire nuclear plant. This means that a completely new licensing review and full analysis of all new stress conditions placed on other components that are no longer level needs to be conducted and receive an independent engineering review as well, since SCE has not publicized this fact to the people of Georgia.  

The 2 million pound roof of the Vogtle Unit 3 shield building has been set into place at Georgia Power’s nuclear expansion project near Waynesboro, Georgia. Credit: Georgia Power

Vogtle Units 3 & 4 are notoriously over budget, and their construction has been delayed for years. Now with the Covid-19 Pandemic, and these newly uncovered flaws, the construction will slow further as a complete safety review must be conducted to ascertain whether the ‘basemat foundation’ meets the foundation integrity demanded for a nuclear island (NI).  The Vogtle Unit 3 nuclear island underlies the strange heavy design of the AP1000 with its donut-shaped 8-million-pound water tank at the apex of the entire containment system that is meant to protect us from a meltdown. 

Let’s look more closely at the history of Vogtle and the so-called nuclear renaissance that never happened. Complicit in this financial boondoggle is the Georgia Public Service Commission (GPSC) whose members have greenlighted all these cost overruns in return for campaign contributions from the nuclear industry. That’s why we wrote The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia. At Vogtle, all the extensive cost overruns have been shifted to Georgia taxpayers and ratepayers, and originally these plants were built with federal loan guarantees – that is our money folks, and a story for another time in the Vogtle saga.

During the past decade Fairewinds joined with other nuclear risk and environmental advocacy groups to raise awareness about the numerous safety flaws and operational issues associated with the AP1000 reactor design. You can read more about those problems and issues here.

In its legal brief, based on this Fairewinds Associates report,  BREDL asked for a formal investigation of the Southern Nuclear Operating Company for making “materially false statements” to the NRC by claiming that the leaning walls were caused by construction tolerance measurements when the real reason the walls have moved is that the ‘basemat  foundation’ of the Vogtle nuclear island (NI) is sinking.  

You can find the Fairewinds Associates expert report and BREDL’s legal filing here and under the reports section of this Fairewinds site. You also may read BREDL’s legal filing and the other documents filed on BREDL’s home site, where you will also see the breadth and depth of the environmental work conducted by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and its associated chapters in many states.