Editor's Note: This piece was written prior to the 2025 Georgia Election, which delivered a victory for the state's progressive coalition who tirelessly advocated for the ousting of the Republican stronghold of the Public Service Commission. The election of Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson over Republicans Fitz Johnson and Tim Echols marked the first time statewide election victories for the Democrats have won statewide elections to a state-level office in Georgia since 2006. Plant Vogtle's expansion and subsequent rate hikes offer important foreshadowing for how the state's courting of new data center construction projects poses similar challenges ahead for keeping utility rates low for Georgians. While the ultimate goal is the abolition of for-profit, paid utilities for all, the election is a crucial step in the fight against more hikes and corporate exploitation in the immediate future.
Sheet metal work runs in the Bratcher family.
In the 1970s, Robert and Brad Bratcher's father moved the family to Baxley, Georgia to work on the Hatch nuclear plant.
"In the town we live in, Baxley, if you ain't got old money, you gotta get you a trade and go to the road," said 61-year-old Robert.
Robert started his union apprenticeship as a sheet metal worker in 1984 and served much of it working on a different nuclear project—the first two reactors of the Vogtle nuclear plant near rural Waynesboro, Georgia, south of Augusta near the Savannah River.
In 2009, early construction began on two new reactors at Vogtle Units 3 and 4. According to newspaper reports, the contractors began negotiations with organized labor in 2010. The Vogtle Plant expansion came fully online in Spring of 2024.
Brad, 52, missed the first Vogtle plants, but began working on Units 3 and 4 in 2013. "I got paid crazy money to not do a whole lot," Brad said, chuckling. "Now I'm back in the real world where I don't get a whole lot of money, but I gotta do a whole lot."
In 2014 Robert joined his brother Brad and they each worked at the site for around a decade. For Brad, it was his longest project. "It was a very good thing for the state, it was a very good thing for organized labor," Brad said. "That's a lot of man-hours for all trades in that."
Brad's comments represent the sentiment held by Georgia's union construction workers, for whom the Vogtle 3 and 4 expansion meant thousands of good, stable, long-lasting jobs, in a state where union membership hasn't risen above five percent in the past decade.
For other Georgians, however, Vogtle became a byword for disaster.
Units 3 and 4 cost around $35 billion, their additions making Vogtle, by some estimates, the most expensive energy plant in the world. It was about twice the expected cost, and came online seven years late.
Just under half of the energy generated by the project, or 45.7 percent to be exact, is held by Georgia Power, the sole shareholder-owned electric utility in the state. The other major shares are held by non-profit energy companies Oglethorpe Power co-operative and Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia. Neither commented for this story.
"Vogtle is now the largest generator of clean energy in the country," said Georgia Power spokesperson John Kraft in a statement. "We are proud of the thousands of American workers who were onsite day after day working to bring this project online to serve a growing Georgia. Our focus over the years has remained on safety and quality construction and fulfilling our responsibility to our customers to provide clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy."
Vogtle became a byword for disaster.
Georgia Power, being for-profit and shareholder-owned, is regulated by the elected officials of the state Public Service Commission, and for decades, the fate of Units 3 and 4 played out in public hearings at the commission. It was the commission that had the final say about how much of the astronomical price tag for Vogtle could be passed along to electric customers and how much would be taken as a loss by the shareholders.
In 2009, a new law was signed allowing Georgia Power to recoup financing costs while the plant was under construction. From 2011 to 2024, customers saw this as a small fee on their bills—somewhere between $4 and $8. Georgia Power argued that this, along with Department of Energy loan guarantees, helped to keep prices lower.
Westinghouse, the contractor responsible for Units 3 and 4, also worked on a similar project in South Carolina. In 2017 Westinghouse went bankrupt. The South Carolina reactors were scrapped due to rising costs, and the Georgia Public Service Commission held hearings on whether to continue Units 3 and 4 at Vogtle.
Environmental and consumer advocacy groups advocated to end the project, which was already well over budget. But, it carried on despite the public's concerns.
In January 2024, Georgia Power signed a settlement with the consumer advocacy group Georgia Watch, a coalition represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center and others to pass about $7.6 billion on to customers, with another $2.6 billion being covered by the company.
"Although nuclear has a high cost to build, it offers extremely stable and predictable fuel and operating costs over the life of the units [expected to be 60 to 80 years], helping keep rates low for our customers in the long term," said Kraft.
After both Unit 3 and 4 came online, monthly rates for Georgia Power customers went up a little over $14, a modest increase that was followed by a string of others. As of Jan. 1 of this year, the average Georgia Power household was paying $43 a month more than they were two years earlier.
Kim Justice also spent about a decade at the Vogtle expansion, starting in 2012.
She had joined the Iron Workers Local 846 in Aiken, South Carolina just a year before. Her son, fresh out of high school, attended an orientation and asked Justice to come along to make sure it wasn't a scam. Justice, a cosmetologist turned stay-at-home mom, ended up joining the union as well, as did her other son and sister.
After about four years at Vogtle, Justice, 54, became a steward for her union. From her perspective, the influx of jobs provided unprecedented opportunities.
"I know for a fact that the people who actually lived in Waynesboro, Georgia, where the plant is located, had opportunities for employment that they'll never see ever again in their lifetime," she said. "They learned skills, they learned how to actually perform a craft."
The money went into homes and cars and vacations, Justice added, and the work opened horizons.
"Some of the [women] that I worked with, they were like, 'I never knew I could do something like this, because the only thing I could think of is being a secretary,'" she said.
The union labor opportunities spread to other towns. In addition to Justice's union in Aiken,, other locals in Augusta and Savannah contributed as well, while traveling union members flooded in from across the country.
Sitting in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1579 Union Hall (IBEW) in downtown Augusta, business manager J.R. Richardson said that at its peak, his local had about 1,200 members with at least 800 employed at Vogtle.
"That was our local members," Richardson said. "Peak manpower on that job, we had right at 1,700 electricians, so we had 900 traveling sisters and brothers from across the country that came and helped us with this work."
It was not clear at the start that Vogtle would be a union project, Richardson said, and it took hard work to make it one.
Matthew Bennett, president of Operating Engineers Local 474 out of Savannah started at the site in 2010 and worked until 2020 when he was elected president; Michael Butler, financial secretary, started in 2012 and was the "last operator on the job," according to Bennett.
The operators ran and repaired all of the heavy equipment on site, and Vogtle allowed them to train a "couple hundred" apprentices. They brought in local forklift operators who had been making $15 or $16 an hour before being bumped up to a union wage of $25 to $30 with benefits on top.
For the workers on the job site, the electric rates going up was not their primary concern.
"There was a lot of that break time banter," Bennett said. "They go to laughing about … they were paying themselves every time they get the power bills." But it was just jokes, he said.
Richardson, with IBEW, said he heard more pushback.
"I don't know if I don't know one single person that didn't complain about it," he said.
Some people he knew who weren't involved in organized labor teased him about the price tag being due to union jobs, he said.
"It was going to go up whether we did it or not," he said.
The union workers and leaders attributed the cost overruns and delays to poor construction management, and remained enthusiastic about nuclear power.
Vogtle allowed workers to stay in one place, and earn a union wage for years. But it was more than that. Several workers also had experience on coal burning power plants and said nuclear power was cleaner, sustainable, and reliable.
James Horch, political coordinator with Iron Workers Local 846, who serves in various roles with the state's Democratic Party, said he would like to see new nuclear built to meet expanding energy needs, followed by solar, then natural gas, then coal. He has worked in coal plants personally and said they were unbelievably dirty.
"I think [nuclear is] the cleanest source, and it's constant," he said. "It doesn't depend on the sun and batteries."
Several union leaders also said that they would be interested in solar energy projects, enthusiastic even, but lamented that most of it in Georgia was being installed by non-union companies.
Georgia Power often argues that electric rates in the state are low. This is true. As of March 2025, Georgia had the lowest consumer kilowatt-hour rate of any state in the nine-state South Atlantic group as defined by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It also may be irrelevant.
According to the Southern Environmental Law Center, using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration Georgia residential customers pay a 9 percent lower rate for electricity than the national average, but their electric bill is about 12 percent above the national average.
"[The] rates aren't necessarily the highest in the country, but people don't pay rates, they pay bills," said Codi Norred, executive director of Georgia Interfaith Power & Light. "And bills have a lot of extra riders."
Norred says there are specific communities across Georgia that have a disproportionately high energy burden—the percentage of gross household income spent on energy.
Across the state as a whole, Georgia has an average energy burden of two percent, matching Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee, slightly below Alabama at three percent.
Of the more than 500 counties across these states, however, just 33 have an energy burden of five percent or higher. 12 of these are in Georgia, representing a slightly higher than the proportion of total counties that Georgia represents.
"It's kind of just a perfect storm in terms of Georgia Bill payers being put in a really hard spot, while Georgia Power has incredibly high rates of return … they have the highest compensated utility CEO in the country," Norred said, referring to the CEO of Southern Company, Georgia Power's parent company—a true statement, according to the Energy & Policy Institute.
Georgia State Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones II, who represents much of Augusta—near Vogtle, although not covering it—said that elected leaders had to balance different interests on huge projects: economic impact, environmental impact, and the rates.
According to Jones, there were real issues with the project, and real lessons to be learned, but on balance, he felt that the plant's expansion was a net benefit for the state.
"When we talk about good union jobs … people brought their skill, etc. to where now they'll actually be able to go other places and continue to hone their craft," he said. "And so I think that that's a major impact, not only for the Augusta area but for the state of Georgia."
Most of the other people interviewed about Vogtle had only focused on one part of these balanced interests.
For the environmental and consumer advocacy groups, it was all about the rates and what the increasing energy bills meant for vulnerable Georgians. For the unions, it was about stable jobs, new opportunities for organized labor, and bringing clean energy onto the grid. The advocates interviewed for this story generally had not spoken with the unions, and the unions had not spoken to the advocates.
When asked about why, Horch, a union laborer with the iron workers, took a moment to reflect.
"The thing with progressives is they don't mind fighting with each other, and they're all trying to get to the same place," he said. "Sometimes they just — they can't figure out how to get there."
Liz Coyle, executive director of the consumer advocacy group Georgia Watch, said the jobs Vogtle created left the state when the work was done. Labor leaders stressed how many local people got good work on the site, although it produced far fewer long-term jobs. Richardson of the IBEW said his local only had about 30 people working at Vogtle full time now.
The Vogtle expansion did produce a lot of jobs, said Bob Sherrier, a staff attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. For his organization, though, the important thing was the bills people saw.
"Georgians want clean energy," he said. "But they also want it to be cost-effective and I don't think Vogtle got there. There were cheaper ways to get clean energy on the grid."
The groups also had fewer conflicting interests as the project moved forward.
Once it was clear that Units 3 and 4 would be built after 2017, said Coyle, the focus of consumer advocacy groups shifted to how much of the cost overruns would come back on consumers rather than working to end the project.
Following this shift, groups like Georgia Watch and the Southern Environmental Law Center's priorities primarily focused on negotiating the final agreement on who paid for cost overruns.
The plant's expansion was a net benefit for the state.
Not every group was happy with the final settlement on cost sharing.
Glenn Carroll with Nuclear Watch South, an anti-nuclear group that advocated for ending the Vogtle expansion, said there was only one settlement she would have been happy with.
"If they had made a settlement that after all of this, we've realized we don't need Plant Vogtle… we're going to cancel it," she said.
But the agreement mandated that Georgia Power not only eat a good portion of the cost overrun, but also expand a low-income customer program, support renewable energy, and increase energy efficiency programs.
For Coyle and Sherrier, it was the best they were going to get.
"We want carbon-free energy, and I think we did learn a lot of lessons from Vogtle," said Sherrier. "But Georgians did have to pay for those lessons."
It seems unlikely that those lessons will be applied to new nuclear plants in Georgia any time in the near future. Georgia Power, in its latest proposal on energy expansion, mentioned nuclear upgrades but no new plants amid a huge proposed increase in electric generation capacity.
In a recent hearing, a staffer for the Public Service Commission described the amount of power the company is looking to add to the grid as "two to three Vogtles, maybe four in terms of cost."
The amount people pay for new energy generation from Georgia Power will be up to the Public Service Commission, which is holding a long-delayed election this year for two seats. Advocates have worked to increase turnout in an otherwise obscure election by highlighting the cost of power.
As for the union members, some are still holding out hope for more nuclear jobs in future.
"I know it probably ran over, and the budget maybe went over," said Robert Bratcher, the sheet metal worker. "But like I said, I wish they'd build two more."