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| Vogtle Unit 3 near Waynesboro, GA |
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) likely will place the two nuclear-power units being developed at Southern Company's Plant Vogtle into a receivership, according to a report from banbalch.com.
The Vogtle project has been plagued by cost overruns, construction delays, and a wide-ranging racketeering scandal that has been swirling around Southern Company and its subsidiaries for years. The most recent portion of the scandal involves the unlawful sealing of court records by Alabama Circuit Judge Tamara Harris Johnson, an apparent effort to protect wrongdoers at Southern Company affiliate Alabama Power and its corporate associates, Drummond Company and the Balch & Bingham law firm.
The curious sealing attracted the attention of AL.com, the state's largest news outlet and prize-winning columnist John Archibald. That could be a precursor to the NRC placing the Vogtle project into a receivership, reports K.B. Forbes, publisher of banbalch.com and CEO of its parent organization, the CDLU public charity and advocacy group. Under the headline "Receivership for Vogtle? Southern Company Scrutiny Soars with Rebirth of North Birmingham Bribery Trial and Targeting of Innocent Children," Forbes writes:
Now that two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Archibald has pealed back the apparent corruption of the Alabama judicial system by the Southern Company criminal enterprise -- involving the unlawful sealing of records related to the civil rebirth of the North Birmingham Bribery criminal case, the Office of Investigations at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission can finally tell the commissioners to place the Vogtle Nuclear Plant into receivership, with a third-party administrator.
The Office of Investigations “develops policy, procedures, and quality-control standards for investigations of licensees, applicants, their contractors or vendors, including the investigations of all allegations of wrongdoing.”
A receivership, according to Investopedia.com, is a court-appointed tool that can assist creditors in recovering funds in default and can help troubled companies avoid bankruptcy. Having a receivership in place makes it easier for a lender to obtain the funds that are owed to them if a borrower defaults on a loan.
A receivership may also occur as a step in a company's restructuring process that is initiated to return a company to profitability.
Forbes' article comes as the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) has a hearing set for today (7/27/23) to review progress on the Vogtle project. From a report at the Georgia Recorder:
On Friday, Georgia Power announced that a new nuclear reactor at Plant Vogtle is on its way to becoming fully operational in the coming months, news that comes several days before the utility faces another showdown over the project’s ballooning costs brought on by years of delays.
Georgia Power announced on Friday (7/21/23) that the Waynesboro nuclear-energy facility operators, Southern Nuclear, has turned over to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission the 364 inspections, tests, and analyses required for regulatory approval to assure that Vogtle’s final reactor meets strict nuclear safety and quality standards prior to completion. The development comes just weeks after Georgia Power revealed that Vogtle’s third reactor unit was delayed for another month before becoming the first new reactor to produce electricity in the country in 40 years when it came online in July.
Georgia Power is awaiting the nuclear commission’s formal approval to start loading fuel into Unit 4, which is expected to be completed by this fall or early 2024. It is the last planned expansion of the nuclear plant started in the late 1980s with the completion of two reactors. . . .
The latest setback to Vogtle’s Unit 3 was caused by a malfunction of the hydrogen system that supports the generator that converts the turbine’s mechanical power into electricity. It was another of many delays stemming from the project’s early stages when its contractor Westinghouse Electric declared bankruptcy, to technical and regulatory problems throughout construction as well as periodic worker shortages during the pandemic.
On Thursday (today, 7/27/23), Georgia’s Public Service Commission is scheduled to hold another hearing to review the progress of a project with costs that have more than doubled to north of $31 billion after taking seven years longer to complete than projected. A number of utilities analysts and consumer and clean-energy groups have expressed concern about how much more ratepayers will have to pay for a project that its supporters argue will provide a reliable, cleaner source of energy for decades to come.
The hearing comes as Forbes reports on the myriad ways Southern Company's racketeering activities have seeped into the Birmingham area:
Southern Company paid contractor and vendor Matrix, LLC, and its founder “Sloppy Joe” Perkins millions, with no need of invoicing, to allegedly investigate, target, spy on, and harass potential enemies and innocent children.
Perkins foolishly admitted that more than $50 million was laundered through 18 different tax-exempt entities, and then had his press release deleted into an Internet black hole.
Why in heaven’s name is a publicly traded utility company sending threatening packages of luggage and outfits to four young children and their mother?
Why in heaven’s name is a publicly traded utility company calling and harassing a Hispanic mother and her two young daughters demanding to know her whereabouts causing her and her family to flee to Mexico?
Why in heaven’s name is a publicly traded utility company allegedly breaking into offices, stealing bank records, and impersonating others to illegally obtain confidential financial information?
Southern Company, its subsidiaries, and vendors and contractors are out of control and appear to be involved in a large web of wrongdoing and deception.
That web appears to have tentacles with considerable reach, and it involves some deeply disturbing activities reports Forbes:
The embattled law firm Balch & Bingham, another Southern Company vendor, has two of its attorneys sitting now, this very moment, in federal prison. One for bribery and money laundering; the other for possession of kiddie porn.
Both disbarred attorneys at one point represented Southern Company. The bribery and money laundering were tied directly to the original North Birmingham Bribery Trial in 2018.
Now look at the Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant. The Plant is operated by Southern Nuclear Operating Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southern Company.
Vogtle costs “have more than doubled to north of $31 billion after taking seven years longer to complete than projected,” according to a report Monday by the Georgia Recorder.
The cost overruns and delays appear to show “intentional deception and criminal concealment” to investors, ratepayers, and regulators.
The Compliance Officer and General Counsel at Southern Nuclear is Millie Ronnlund, the former Balch & Bingham partner whose husband, Robert M. Ronnlund, was the attorney accused of engaging in alleged obstruction of justice and the alteration of evidence in the Newsome Conspiracy Case.
Ronnlund lives just yards up the road from Willard L. Bowers, the retired Alabama Power executive whose son, Jeffrey Bowers, a then-Columbiana Police Officer, pulled Burt Newsome over in 2013 and arrested the innocent man in an alleged “staged arrest.”
Another Southern Company subsidiary was allegedly engaged in fraudulent practices, criminal concealment, and false claim acts.
As ENRSoutheast wrote last December:
“The [U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’] Jacksonville District hired Durham, N.C.-based PowerSecure Inc., a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Co., via a sole source time-and-materials contract for repair and restoration of Puerto Rico’s power grid following Hurricane Maria in 2017. The Corps’ contract was initially worth $1.3 million. After several modifications, its value reached $523 million, according to a 2019 U.S. Dept. of Defense Inspector General audit.
“U.S. Justice Dept. officials alleged that PowerSecure violated the Truth in Negotiations Act, which requires that government negotiators have access to cost or pricing data when developing a proposal for a sole-source contract, as well as the False Claims Act, which makes contractors liable for defrauding the federal government, by knowingly failing to disclose pricing data related to labor and equipment costs on another post-hurricane restoration project it had taken in Florida and Georgia earlier in 2017.”
In December, Southern Company’s wholly owned subsidiary agreed to pay the federal government $8.4 million to resolve allegations that it improperly withheld pricing data.
The concealment of pricing data confirms what we correctly foreshadowed in 2022: criminal concealment has been a consistent element involving Southern Company and their stooges, vendors, and contractors.
Wrongdoing? The enormity of Southern Company’s alleged wrongdoing is unprecedented.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has the irrefutable evidence, the documentation, the chronological timeline to put the Vogtle Nuclear Power plant into receivership and end the criminal RICO enterprise known as Southern Company.
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