The tea party groups are also targeting Georgia Power over the rising cost to build two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle.

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Mr Cooper also found that initial cost projections tended dramatically to underestimate actual costs, as the Vogtle experience would seem to bear out.

ECONOMIST: America��s nuclear industry struggles to get off the floor

That position echoes one taken by Gregory Jaczko, the NRC's chairman, and the only one of its five members to dissent from the commission's approval of the Vogtle plants.

ECONOMIST: America��s nuclear industry struggles to get off the floor

In Georgia, Vogtle Units 3 and 4 (owned jointly by a number of utilities, including Georgia Power) appear in somewhat better shape, but issues have cropped up there as well.

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Now Southern Co. is trying to revive it with a pair of reactors set to come online in 2016 and 2017 next to two older reactors at its Vogtle power station, 30 miles south of Augusta.

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Already a consortium of nine environmental groups plans to contest the Vogtle licence in court, alleging that the NRC violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing fully to consider the environmental impact of the new reactors.

ECONOMIST: America��s nuclear industry struggles to get off the floor