Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro, Georgia now operates four nuclear units, making it the largest nuclear generating station in the United States by capacity. Units 1 and 2 entered service in the late 1980s. Units 3 and 4 came online in 2023 and 2024, the first newly constructed commercial reactors completed in the country in a generation.
Georgia Power staffs the site around the clock with several hundred employees who monitor operations, maintain equipment and handle site security. The utility marked August as Generation Appreciation Month, tying the recognition to the start of the school year and the role baseload generation plays during late summer peak periods in the Southeast.
The expansion carried a final cost near 36.8 billion dollars, well above original estimates, and Georgia ratepayers have absorbed part of that through rate proceedings before the Georgia Public Service Commission. That cost history is the reference point most often cited in debates over whether utilities elsewhere should build large light water reactors or wait for smaller modular designs.
The output arrives as Georgia adds data center load at a pace that has pushed Georgia Power into transmission expansion across roughly 1,000 miles of new corridor. Vogtle units 3 and 4 supply carbon free baseload capacity that runs at high capacity factors, which utility planners weigh against the intermittency of the solar capacity Georgia has added over the same period.
Source: WRDW - https://www.wrdw.com/2026/08/03/plant-vogtle-powers-georgia-classrooms-students-head-back-school/