Related Links: Nuclear Regulators Ding Firm For Subpar Safety Culture Crews Pour Foundation Mats at Summer and Vogtle Plants South Carolina Electric & Gas said Wednesday it has pushed back by at least six months the estimated online date for V.C. Summer Unit 2, the first of two planned 1,100-MW nuclear units there, because of contractor delays in fabricating and delivering key elements of the $10 billion-plus project.SCE&G, a subsidiary of Scana Corp., said it now expects the first new unit to begin commercial operation in either the fourth quarter of 2017 or first quarter of 2018. Most recently, Unit

Photo Courtesy of Mississippi Power Consultant's report says that even though Mississippi Power's Kemper County project footprint is large, work spaces are tight and schedule delays could be exacerbated by stacking of trades. Related Links: Mississippi Power Replaces KBR and Yates on Big Coal-Gas Project Coal Power for Mississippi, But $2.9-Billion Cost Cap Set Union labor is helping Mississippi Power and its Southern Co. Services affiliate get the utility's troubled Kemper County integrated gasification combined-cycle project back on track. In its earlier stages, the now $4-billion-plus Kemper project was being built almost entirely by contractors with non-union workforces.But as the

Workers such as Mexican-born Sebastian Martinez, pictured at a Florida jobsite in a 2006 file photo, face low wages and poor benefits as well as resentment from unemployed U.S. workers. Related Links: Bipartisan Group of Senators Outlines Plans for Immigration Reform Immigration Bill Receives Tepid Reception The Gang of Eight's Immigration Fight Federal legislation to correct an immigration system that has undermined building industry competition, skewed construction hiring practices and compromised worker safety will be front and center for House and Senate members—and lobbyists—over the next few weeks. The bill, which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 21 after

Related Links: Keystone XL Pipeline Clears a Hurdle EPA's April 22 letter The significance of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's critique of the State Dept.'s draft supplemental environmental impact statement for the Keystone XL pipeline is, apparently, in the eye of the beholder.Proponents of TransCanada's $5.3-billion project say EPA's April 22 letter to the State Dept. is nothing more than a call for tweaking the environmental document to address some lingering issues. However, opponents say EPA's comments pose important questions.Sabrina Fang, an American Petroleum Institute spokeswoman, says the project "is safe and will create tens of thousands of well-paying jobs.

Related Links: Tres Amigas to Link Major US Power Grids Texas Gears Up for Boom In High-Voltage Construction The planned completion this year of $6.8 billion in "competitive renewable energy zone" transmission lines in Texas is leading wind-power developers to shift wind-project planning into high gear.Kent Saathoff, executive advisor to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, says the build-out of some 2,300 miles of 345-kV CREZ lines will roughly double to approximately 18,000 MW—the amount of wind and other power that can be delivered from remote, sparsely populated areas in West Texas and the Texas Panhandle to population centers like

Photo Courtesy Panda Power Funds Panda Power Funds' Temple gas unit is one of three planned by developer. A tightening power supply in Texas is spurring a multibillion-dollar boom in the construction of new natural gas-fired power plants and other projects.According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the electric grid covering 85% of the state, the power reserve margin in the ERCOT region will fall below the reliability council's 13.75% target this summer and for the foreseeable future unless more generating capacity is built.More specifically, ERCOT said the reserve margin is expected to be only 13.2% this

Related Links: Secret Study on Nuke Plant Fix May Hold Clue to Duke CEO's Ouster Duke Energy Moves To Become Largest Utility in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission engineers and Duke Energy Carolinas representatives met on March 25 to discuss the utility's plan to protect the Oconee nuclear station's standby shutdown facility, or SSF, in the unlikely event the Jocassee Dam, located upstream of the station, were to fail catastrophically.In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident in March 2011, the NRC has been expanding its review of U.S. nuclear units' ability to withstand natural phenomena, including flooding, said commission

Photo Courtesy of NAES U.S. nuclear powerplants adding spent-fuel storage capacity. Related Links: Transnuclear Facility Trains Workers for Dry Storage Campaigns Cask Storage For Spent Fuel Nuke Waste Disposal Solution Still Elusive The U.S. nuclear-generation fleet's steady, predictable output of spent nuclear fuel and the federal government's inability to establish a permanent geologic repository point to several decades of regular, high-value work for contractors that install dry-cask storage systems for spent fuel.Thanks to a government plan to establish one or more large-scale, consolidated sites for dry storage of spent fuel by the early 2020s, the next few years could be

AP Photo/Jorge Sanchez Supporter of Hugo Chavez holds a poster of the late Venezuelan president during a parade in Asuncion, Paraguay. Chavez died on March 5 after a two-year bout with cancer. Related Links: Mexican Cement Maker Cemex Settles for Half Value of Seized Assets in Venezuela Venezuela’s new socialist leader hopes to continue the ambitious construction programs initiated by the late President Hugo Chávez, and the nation’s vast oil and mineral reserves will likely enable much—but perhaps not all—of the work to go on, said sources familiar with the political and economic conditiions in Venezuela.“The construction programs of the

Related Links: Vogtle Suppliers Continue to Miss the Mark for Quality Control Georgia Power's Vogtle Plant Under New Round of Criticism The engineering-procurement-construction contractor building the two-unit, 2,200-MW Vogtle nuclear expansion project in Georgia said March 4 that it "will continue to work with" the project's co-owners on ways to minimize the time it takes to complete the units.Lead co-owner Georgia Power told the Georgia Public Service Commission on February 28 that it now expects the two new nuclear units to begin commercial operation in the fourth quarter of 2017 and the fourth quarter of 2018, respectively. Originally, the new