By Kennedy Maize
Could the failed V.C. Summer nuclear power plant project to add two 1,000-MW reactors to an existing site, with heavy federal subsidies, come back to life?
The operating 966-MW Virgil C. Summer nuclear power plant, a Westinghouse pressurized water reactor that went into service on Jan. 1, 1984 at a cost (in 2024 dollars) of about $4 billion, sits on a 2,560-acre site in central South Carolina. It is owned two-thirds by Dominion Energy and one-third by the statewide, state-owned South Carolina Public Service Authority, commonly known as Santee-Cooper.
Sharing the commodious site is an array of pieces of equipment, piles of construction supplies, and miscellaneous debris looking a bit like a lot dedicated to used car parts. It’s the most visible residue of two failed and abandoned 1000-MW Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear units, neither of which had reached 50% completion when both were orphaned in 2017 at a sunk cost of about $9 billion. Meet V.C. Summer 2 and 3.
The Summer expansion was the result of the failed attempt by the U.S. Congress to create a nuclear renaissance. In 2005 legislation, Congress provided up to $8 billion to companies that would build new nuclear plants. Only two companies took up the offer, both proposing to build twin AP1000 reactors: Georgia Power and a group of public power systems, and the partnership of South Carolina’s SCANA Corp. (55%) and Santee Cooper (45%).
Both were named after former utility CEOs and neither went well. In Geogia the two Alvin W. Vogtle units, also on a existing site, went into service last year at a final cost estimated at $37 billion, $17 billion over budget, and a decade late. SCANA and Santee Cooper stopped work at Summer in 2017. The investor-owned utility, vanquished by the Summer project, vanished, bought by Virginia-based Dominion Energy.
Incompetence, delays, bankruptcy, fraud, and multiple jail sentences plagued the Summer project. Santee Cooper was left holding the entire reeking bag.
In January, Santee Cooper issued a request for proposals “seeking parties interested in acquiring the project and related assets, and potentially completing one or both units or pursuing alternative uses of the assets.” The public power system hired Centerview Partners LLC to manage the RFP. Responses were due to Centerview by May 5, 2025.
On May 6, Santee Cooper said it had received “a robust response to its initial request for expressions of interest….” CEO Jimmy Staton said, “The depth and breadth of experience represented by the responding entities is encouraging, and we are committed to giving the review of responses the level of seriousness that it needs and deserves.
“Santee Cooper is working with Centerview and J.P. Morgan to review the responses and managing other next steps. The process, which also includes time for the participating entities to conduct necessary due diligence, will likely take 9-18 months to complete.”
Reuters reported on July 3, citing a Santee Cooper official, “South Carolina’s state-owned utility and project owner Santee Cooper has selected ‘fewer than five’ proposals from 14 received” in response to the RFP. The spokesperson told Reuters, “We expect to complete this process by the end of 2025. Santee Cooper does not intend to own or operate the units, but rather to enable interested entities to pursue completion and operation of the units for the benefit of all South Carolina.”
In the meantime, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who tried to keep the project above water when it sunk eight years ago in the first Trump administration, was advocating resuscitation. At a ribbon cutting Aug. 12 at a new Aiken nuclear research center Graham attended with Energy Secretary Chris Wright, the state’s senior senator said, ““Wake up call; America needs to get back into the nuclear business. We need to build nuclear power plants and get them up and operating.”
During the congressional wrangling over energy subsidies in the consideration of Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” Graham took credit for keeping Biden administration nuclear tax credits in the legislation, which the House had zeroed out. Graham, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said, “The tax credits make all the difference.”
We may know if Graham is right or wrong in a few months. If the project gets started again, it’s a long way from finished. The most recent figures suggest that the first of the Summer AP1000 machines was 48% finished when the tools dropped, and the second under 30%.
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