Dive Summary:

• Environmentalists battling Southern Co.’s plans to build two reactors at the Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia lost their fight Tuesday.
• A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington denied the environmentalists’ claims that regulators didn’t fully consider the environmental hazards. Opponents sought to revoke the Southern Co.’s license and reactor-design certification granted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
• In the wake of Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant disaster, the Vogtle plant will be closely watched. The new project at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, located 180 miles from Atlanta, will cost Southern Co. $14 billion.

From the article:
“The renaissance has fizzled as a wave of cheap natural gas, government-subsidized wind and solar energy and falling consumer demand have challenged the economics of nuclear monoliths built to operate for 60 years or more.”