Southern Company (NYSE: SO) just did something rare in the U.S. electricity market: It brought a large-scale nuclear power plant on line. It was the first time that has been done in over three decades. And the utility is about to do it again, in early 2024, when it attaches a second nuclear power plant to the grid. This is a huge event for investors looking at Southern, but there's a bigger story here that needs to be discussed before you buy the stock.

To say that Southern opening up Vogtle 3 and Vogtle 4, the two nuclear power plants it is building, is a big deal is an understatement. That's only partly because of the 30-plus year pause in the construction of new nuclear power plants in the United States. The other reason is that the path to achieving this was rocky at best.

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Source Fool.com