Santee Cooper opts to reboot Summer reactor project

The board of directors of South Carolina's state-owned utility Santee Cooper voted today to approve the proposal from Brookfield Asset Management to complete two new AP1000 power reactors at the V.C. Summer site in Jenkinsville, S.C.

Brookfield Asset Management won the bid to restart construction on the Summer-2 and -3 units. The proposal will not require funding from rate payers and will bring an additional 2,200 MWe to the region.

This effort would be a restart of a failed project that was started in 2013 by Santee Cooper and the now defunct South Carolina Electric & Gas Company. But due to delays and cost overruns-costing the utilities and rate payers $9 billion-it was cancelled in 2017. It also led to legal actions taken on Westinghouse and now-defunct SCANA executives over defrauding consumers about the timeline and cost of the project.

Deja vu? Santee Cooper with majority owner South Carolina Electric & Gas Company (now Dominion Energy) abandoned the construction on Units 2 and 3 in July 2017, following the filing of bankruptcy by reactor operator Westinghouse. SCE&G transferred its interest in the assets to Santee Cooper in 2018.

Given the recent nuclear renaissance underway and strong backing from the Trump administration, Santee Cooper issued a request for proposals in January to restart the project, which received a large number of proposals that were due in May.

Because the NRC terminated the combined licenses for the two reactors in March 2019-at the request of the project owners-Santee Cooper and Brookfield will have to reapply for construction and operating licenses. However, the previously approved COLs for the site should speed up the process for the new owner.