Plant Vogtle units 3 & 4 under construction
When the decision was made to stop work on the two nuclear
power plants in South Carolina, construction workers didn’t receive much notice
of layoff, according to the following report first published in the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette. This may be the future for Plant Vogtle workers building Units 3 & 4 if Southern Company decides to end work on the costly and long-delayed project.
Westinghouse: Project canceled 'without warning' By Anya
Litvak / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A week after efforts to
build two Westinghouse power plants came to a screeching halt in South
Carolina, the Cranberry-based nuclear firm chronicled the shock of the moment and began dealing with the
aftershocks.
About 6,000
people worked at the V.C. Summer site where two utilities, SCG&E and Santee
Cooper, had commissioned Westinghouse Electric Co. to build two AP1000 power
plants nine years ago.
Westinghouse
had hundreds of its own employees at the site last week when the South Carolina
utilities decided to stop the construction project that already was years
behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. The decision stemmed in
large part from Westinghouse’s March 29 bankruptcy, the utilities said.
But their
move came “without warning,” Westinghouse said in a document filed with the
bankruptcy court Monday.
The project
owners did not give Westinghouse any notice before dismissing its
subcontractors and vendors on the job, telling them to “halt all shipments and
suspend or demobilize all work in progress,” the nuclear company said.
The utilities
also restricted Westinghouse’s access to the project, the company said,
“escorting its employees off the site using armed personnel, and subsequently
only allowing entry to a handful of Westinghouse’s representatives and
subcontractors, preventing Westinghouse from generally accessing the site” and
carrying out its responsibilities.
The same was
true for other workers like Kenneth Blind, a nuclear construction technician
with Fluor Corp., the Texas-based firm that Westinghouse brought in in late
2015 to get the troubled construction work back on track.
Mr. Blind
echoed Westinghouse’s account of what it was like on the day the project was
canceled.
He found it
strange that the Friday before the dismissals craft workers suddenly were told
to hand in their work packages — binders with work instructions necessary
to do their jobs, he said.
But the day
before, Scana Corp., which owns part of the VC Summer project, had announced
that Westinghouse’s parent company Toshiba Corp. had agreed to a $2.2 billion
guarantee for the power plants. Mr. Blind took that as a good sign.
So did
Westinghouse, which wrote in its bankruptcy filing on Monday that negotiating
Toshiba’s commitment sent the message of wanting the projects to continue.
On the morning
of July 31, things at V.C. Summer continued as usual. Mr. Blind’s team was
starting to pour concrete for one of the buildings near the reactor. Around 11
a.m., a security guard approached him and asked if he would be sent home, too.
Too? Mr.
Blind asked.
He went to
find his boss, who then called his boss — a scene that was playing out across
the huge site where thousands of workers were grasping at rumors. Word of armed
guards had started to spread.
At an
“all-hands meeting” at 2 p.m., they were told it was their last day on the job
and thanked for their contribution to the project, Mr. Blind said.
People were
angry, he recalled, and some were crying.
They began
hustling to collect their stuff. “If you couldn't fit it through the
turnstiles, you just had to leave it,” he said.
Now begins
the work of “demobilizing” and “stabilizing” the site, Westinghouse said,
vowing in a court document to seek payment from the South Carolina utilities
for its part of the winding down process.
On Monday,
Westinghouse also asked the court to allow it to break thousands of contracts
associated with the V.C. Summer project. The contracts cover everything from
engineering services and security protection to scaffolding and urine testing.
Had the project
owners negotiated with Westinghouse to take over control of the power plant
construction, as Southern Co. did with the Vogtle project in Georgia, these
contracts would have likely changed hands from Westinghouse to the South
Carolina utilities.
Now, they
will join the long march of unsecured creditors in Westinghouse’s mammoth
bankruptcy.
Anya
Litvak: alitvak@post-gazette.com or
412-263-1455.