COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina’s stalled nuclear power project could finally finish construction as a private company has offered to pay $2.7 billion to the state-owned utility and a small share of the power if they can reach an agreement to get the two reactors up and running.
The half-built reactors ended up so far behind schedule that the project was abandoned in 2017. However, the potential deal is a long way from complete. There will be up to two years of negotiations between utility Santee Cooper and Brookfield Asset Management on the thousands and thousands of details.
The deal would also let Brookfield keep at least 75% of the power generated by the new plant that they could mostly sell to whom they want, such as energy-gobbling data centers. The exact amount of the rest that Santee Cooper receives would be determined on how much the private company has to spend to get the reactors running.
Either side can pull out of the deal, although Brookfield did agree to pay Santee Cooper’s costs both for sorting through the more than 70 bids for the project and the talks as both sides hammer out the final agreement.
Santee Cooper was a minority partner in the doomed plan to build two new nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer site. The state-owned utility along with privately-owned South Carolina Electric & Gas spent more than $9 billion trying to build the reactors.
The unfinished, weathered concrete and metal tower of at least one plant sits not far from the working reactor that has been running 1984 at the rural site about 20 miles (32 kilometers) up the Broad River from Columbia.
Four executives ended up in prison or home confinement for lying to regulators, shareholders, ratepayers and investigators and left millions of people paying for decades for a project that never produced electricity. Taxpayers and ratepayers ended up on the hook because of a state law that allowed the utilities to charge for costs before any power was generated.
If the $2.7 billion payment goes through, most of Santee Cooper’s debt from the nuclear debacle would be erased, utility CEO Jimmy Staton said at Monday’s board meeting where the proposal was unanimously approved.
“Our customers have been paying for these assets since 2017. It’s time they get some value out of that,” Staton said.
Interest in the project has grown as power demand in the U.S. surges with the increase in data centers as artificial intelligence technology develops.
President Donald Trump’s administration wants the U.S. to quadruple the amount of power generated by nuclear plants over the next 25 years.
But watchdog groups said there are too many hurdles to put this project in the win column right now.
After eight years in the elements, all the equipment and the structure of the plant, which was less than halfway finished, will need to be carefully inspected before it can be used. The permits to build and the licenses to operate the nuclear plants will need to be renewed, likely starting from scratch, said Tom Clements, executive director of the nuclear watchdog group Savannah River Site Watch.
Also, the type of reactors proposed have seen massive cost overruns even when successfully built. Brookfield took over the assets of Westinghouse Electric Co., which had to declare bankruptcy because of difficulties building them.
Two nuclear reactors built in a similar way in Georgia went $17 billion over budget before they were fully operational in 2023.
