Plant Vogtle Units 3-4 Finished $21 Billion Over Budget at Nearly $37 Billion Total, Raising Georgia Household Bills by $45/Month and Deterring Future Large Reactor Construction

Georgia Power's Vogtle Units 3 and 4 — the only new nuclear reactors built in the U.S. in over 30 years — entered commercial operation in July 2023 and April 2024 respectively, but at a total cost of approximately $36.8 billion (against an original estimate of $14 billion), seven years behind schedule, after driving co-owner Westinghouse into bankruptcy in 2017. Why it matters: the massive overrun established a reference point that all future large reactor proposals in the U.S. will be measured against, so no U.S. utility has announced plans to build another large Generation III+ reactor, so the nuclear industry has pivoted entirely to SMRs and reactor restarts as politically viable strategies, so the 2,234 MW of new capacity from Vogtle cost roughly $16,500/kW — more than three times the cost of utility-scale solar-plus-storage, so ratepayers in Georgia are now paying $45/month more on average in 2025 specifically due to Vogtle cost recovery. The structural root cause is that the U.S. had not built a new nuclear reactor in 30 years, resulting in a complete loss of construction project management expertise, supply chain readiness, and skilled craft labor, combined with mid-construction design changes after the Fukushima disaster and the bankruptcy of lead contractor Westinghouse in March 2017.