With the Vogtle Units 3 & 4 project 84 percent completed Georgia Power confirmed it is trimming its workforce back by 2,000 workers in part due to virus-related absenteeism at a worksite with more than 9,000 workers on site.
Georgia Power announced the 20 percent workforce backpedaling in a regulatory discloser filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission by Southern Company, the owner of Georgia Power.
The filing said the company was mandating social distancing at the work site, which would be expensive, costing up to $30 million. The cutback, the company said, would make social distancing easier to accomplish.
The schedule for project completion remained intact, the company said.
Georgia power recently announced the final major lifts at the site had been completed with placement of the containment vessel top for Unit 4.
The containment vessel top head is 130 feet in diameter, 37 feete tall and weighs 1.5 million pounds – about the weight, the company said, of two fully loaded jumbo jets.
The containment vessel head is made up of 58 large plates welded together, each of them more than an inch and a half thick.