Southern Company Services

Last updated
Southern Company Services, Inc.
Company type Subsidiary
Industry Electric Utility
Founded1963;61 years ago (1963)
Headquarters Birmingham, Alabama, US
Key people
Mark Lantrip (CEO and president)
Products Shared Services
Number of employees
4,536 (2008)
Parent Southern Company
Website southerncompany.com

Southern Company Services, Inc., headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, is the shared services division of Southern Company. Formed in 1963, as Southern Services, the company provides administrative and operational services to all of Southern Company's operating divisions. The company also provides engineering services to Alabama Power, Georgia Power, Gulf Power and Mississippi Power.

Contents

History

1960s to 1980s

Southern Services was formed in 1963 as a shared services department for Southern Company's five electric operating divisions. The idea was first conceived by Eugene A. Yates, Southern Company's first President, although not implemented until much later. The division was originally headquartered in what is now the First Commercial Bank Building in the Birmingham suburb of Mountain Brook, Alabama until it moved to the Inverness suburb in the late 1980s, followed by a relocation to the Colonnade office towers in 2017. The division also has a large office in Atlanta, Georgia.

2000 to present

In January 2016, the United States Department of Energy announced a $80m award fund to develop Generation IV reactor designs. [1] One of two beneficiaries, Southern Company Services will use the funding to develop a Molten Chloride Fast Reactor, a type of MSR developed earlier by British scientists at Atomic Energy Research Establishment. [2] It will partner with TerraPower, Electric Power Research Institute, Vanderbilt University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory; presumably in conjunction with sister division Southern Nuclear.

Related Research Articles

Southern Company is an American gas and electric utility holding company based in the Southern United States. It is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with executive offices also located in Birmingham, Alabama. The company is the second largest utility company in the U.S. in terms of customer base, as of 2021. Through its subsidiaries it serves 9 million gas and electric utility customers in 6 states. Southern Company's regulated regional electric utilities serve a 120,000-square-mile (310,000 km2) territory with 27,000 miles (43,000 km) of distribution lines.

Westinghouse Electric Company LLC is an American nuclear power company formed in 1999 from the nuclear power division of the original Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It offers nuclear products and services to utilities internationally, including nuclear fuel, service and maintenance, instrumentation, control and design of nuclear power plants. Westinghouse's world headquarters are located in the Pittsburgh suburb of Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania. Brookfield Renewable Partners, a Canadian private equity fund and a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management is the majority owner of Westinghouse.

The Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) was responsible for electricity generation, transmission and bulk sales in England and Wales from 1958 until privatisation of the electricity industry in the 1990s.

The Army Nuclear Power Program (ANPP) was a program of the United States Army to develop small pressurized water and boiling water nuclear power reactors to generate electrical and space-heating energy primarily at remote, relatively inaccessible sites. The ANPP had several accomplishments, but ultimately it was considered to be "a solution in search of a problem." The U.S. Army Engineer Reactors Group managed this program and it was headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The program began in 1954 and had effectively terminated by about 1977, with the last class of NPP operators graduating in 1977. Work continued for some time thereafter either for decommissioning of the plants or placing them into SAFSTOR. The current development of small modular reactors has led to a renewed interest in military applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Molten-salt reactor</span> Type of nuclear reactor cooled by molten material

A molten-salt reactor (MSR) is a class of nuclear fission reactor in which the primary nuclear reactor coolant and/or the fuel is a mixture of molten salt with a fissionable material.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alabama Power</span> American electrical company

Alabama Power Company, headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, is a company in the southern United States that provides electricity service to 1.4 million customers in the southern two-thirds of Alabama. It also operates appliance stores. It is one of four U.S. utilities operated by the Southern Company, one of the nation's largest generators of electricity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edwin I. Hatch Nuclear Power Plant</span> Nuclear power plant near Baxley, Georgia

The Edwin Irby Hatch Nuclear Power Plant is near Baxley, Georgia, in the southeastern United States, on a 2,244-acre (9 km²) site. It has two General Electric boiling water reactors with a total capacity of 1,848 megawatts. Previously, the reactors had a combined capacity listing of 1,759 MW. Unit 1 went online in 1974 and was followed by Unit 2 in 1978. The plant was named for Edwin I. Hatch, president of Georgia Power from 1963 to 1975, and chairman from 1975 to 1978.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vogtle Electric Generating Plant</span> Nuclear power plant in Burke County, Georgia, US

The Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, also known as Plant Vogtle, is a four-unit nuclear power plant located in Burke County, near Waynesboro, Georgia, in the southeastern United States.

The Westinghouse Astronuclear Laboratory (WANL) was a division of Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Established in 1959 to develop nuclear space propulsion technologies for the government, the lab was located, for most of its history, in the paradoxically small town of "Large" along Pa. Rte 51, about 13 miles (21 km) south of Pittsburgh in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, USA. The site is not far from the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin, which Westinghouse operated during the same time and later.

Generation IVreactors are nuclear reactor design technologies that are envisioned as successors of generation III reactors. The Generation IV International Forum (GIF) – an international organization that coordinates the development of generation IV reactors – specifically selected six reactor technologies as candidates for generation IV reactors. The designs target improved safety, sustainability, efficiency, and cost. The World Nuclear Association in 2015 suggested that some might enter commercial operation before 2030.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion</span> U.S. project 1946–1961

The Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) program and the preceding Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft (NEPA) project worked to develop a nuclear propulsion system for aircraft. The United States Army Air Forces initiated Project NEPA on May 28, 1946. NEPA operated until May 1951, when the project was transferred to the joint Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)/USAF ANP. The USAF pursued two different systems for nuclear-powered jet engines, the Direct Air Cycle concept, which was developed by General Electric, and Indirect Air Cycle, which was assigned to Pratt & Whitney. The program was intended to develop and test the Convair X-6, but was canceled in 1961 before that aircraft was built. The total cost of the program from 1946 to 1961 was about $1 billion.

Georgia Power is an electric utility headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It was established as the Georgia Railway and Power Company and began operations in 1902 running streetcars in Atlanta as a successor to the Atlanta Consolidated Street Railway Company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southern Nuclear</span>

Southern Nuclear Operating Company, Inc., headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, is a nuclear energy facility operators and involved in advanced nuclear technologies research. The company operates a total of seven units for Alabama Power and Georgia Power at the Joseph M. Farley Nuclear Plant near Dothan, Ala.; the Edwin I. Hatch Nuclear Plant near Baxley, Ga., and the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant near Waynesboro, Ga. Southern Nuclear is the licensee of two new nuclear units at Plant Vogtle, which are among the first nuclear units being constructed in the United States in more than 30 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atomics International</span> Defunct US nuclear technology company

Atomics International was a division of the North American Aviation company which engaged principally in the early development of nuclear technology and nuclear reactors for both commercial and government applications. Atomics International was responsible for a number of accomplishments relating to nuclear energy: design, construction and operation of the first nuclear reactor in California (1952), the first nuclear reactor to produce power for a commercial power grid in the United States (1957) and the first nuclear reactor launched into outer space by the United States (1965).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TerraPower</span> Nuclear reactor design company

TerraPower is an American nuclear reactor design and development engineering company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. TerraPower is developing a class of nuclear fast reactors termed traveling wave reactors (TWR).

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) is a provider of advanced reactors and nuclear services. It is headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States. Established in June 2007, GEH is a nuclear alliance created by General Electric and Hitachi. In Japan, the alliance is Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy. In November 2015, Jay Wileman was appointed CEO.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thorium-based nuclear power</span> Nuclear energy extracted from thorium isotopes

Thorium-based nuclear power generation is fueled primarily by the nuclear fission of the isotope uranium-233 produced from the fertile element thorium. A thorium fuel cycle can offer several potential advantages over a uranium fuel cycle—including the much greater abundance of thorium found on Earth, superior physical and nuclear fuel properties, and reduced nuclear waste production. One advantage of thorium fuel is its low weaponization potential. It is difficult to weaponize the uranium-233 that is bred in the reactor. Plutonium-239 is produced at much lower levels and can be consumed in thorium reactors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Integral Molten Salt Reactor</span>

The Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) is a nuclear power plant design targeted at developing a commercial product for the small modular reactor (SMR) market. It employs molten salt reactor technology which is being developed by the Canadian company Terrestrial Energy. It is based closely on the denatured molten salt reactor (DMSR), a reactor design from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In addition, it incorporates some elements found in the SmAHTR, a later design from the same laboratory. The IMSR belongs to the DMSR class of molten salt reactors (MSR) and hence is a "burner" reactor that employs a liquid fuel rather than a conventional solid fuel. This liquid contains the nuclear fuel as well as serving as the primary coolant.

Transatomic Power was an American company that designed Generation IV nuclear reactors based on molten salt reactor (MSR) technology.

References

  1. "Energy Department Announces New Investments in Advanced Nuclear Power Reactors..." US Department of Energy . Retrieved 16 January 2016.
  2. Martin, David. "The UK's Forgotten Molten Salt Reactor Programme". Weinberg Next Nuclear . Retrieved 17 January 2016.