Will South Carolina lead the nuclear renaissance?

JENKINSVILLE, S.C. — Efforts to complete two partially constructed nuclear reactors in South Carolina took a big step forward in October as the state-run utility, Santee Cooper, chose Brookfield Asset Management to oversee their construction and potential completion.

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Construction on the reactors at the Virgil C. Summer nuclear plant in Jenkinsville was abandoned in 2017 after massive cost overruns and a series of delays. The developer Westinghouse declared bankruptcy, executives from South Carolina Gas and Electric as well as Westinghouse were indicted on fraud charges and ratepayers were left to pay a $9 billion bill for power that never came online.

The project was a symbol for the corruption and failure that plagued the “nuclear renaissance,” promised in the 2000s, but nearly a decade later, Jim Little, a member of the South Carolina governor’s Nuclear Advisory Board, believes V.C. Summer has the opportunity to completely change the narrative.

“It converts South Carolina from being a loser to a leader,” he said.

With South Carolina expecting massive growth in energy demand due to its growing population and the rise of power-intensive industries like advanced manufacturing and data centers, Little said it seemed like an opportune time to expand the state’s nuclear energy capacity.

WSOC spoke with Little in the spring, after he visited the V.C. Summer site and co-wrote a letter advocating for the state and energy officials to take another look at the project.

“I expected to say, ‘Oh, my God, this place is just a junkyard,’” he said. “Looking at that half completed plant, it looked like a tremendous possibility.”

Little said the reactors appeared to be in great condition, as if a good construction firm could simply pick up where things left off.

“There’s no project like this,” he said.

There are currently no new nuclear reactor projects under construction in the United States. There are some plans to extend old plants and bring retired facilities back online, but as for new nuclear generation, industry experts expect it would take 10 to 15 years to complete construction. Little believes, if done right, V.C. Summer could be online in half that time and serve as a model for future projects.

According to its latest Integrated Resource Plan, Duke Energy itself is eyeing the possibility of adding similar reactors to its William States Lee III Nuclear Station site in Cherokee County, S.C., and the Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant site in Wake County.

“Meeting the growth needs of North Carolina with cleaner energy that’s available. 24/7, that’s not possible without nuclear,” spokesman Bill Norton said in an October interview.

At the same time, affordability and feasibility remain the elephants in the room. South Carolina ratepayers are already paying for failure at the V.C. Summer. The Vogtle reactors in neighboring Georgia, which are identical to those under construction at V.C. Summer, are the only American reactors completed in the past decade and they both came in years late and billions over budget, leading to rate hikes for Georgia Power customers.

Jim Warren, the executive director of the environmental advocacy organization, NCWARN said these utilities have not earned enough trust completing these nuclear projects and he fears ratepayers will ultimately pay the price for overinvestment here, while options like solar and storage are cheaper and faster to implement.

“The failure rate, the huge risk, the economic gamble, all of that adds up,” he said.

Little argues things will be different this time. Put simply, they have to be.

“You cannot fail twice,” he said. “So you’ve got to be looking forward now to say, ‘Well, in a new environment. How can we complete this better than Vogtle even was completed?’”

He’s optimistic about the choice of Brookfield Asset Management, a Canadian-based firm, due to their ownership of a majority interest in Westinghouse, the developer of the V.C. Summer reactors. Over the next few months, Brookfield will study the V.C. Summer site, develop a feasibility plan and look for a potential construction team.

If all goes well, Little said he expects Brookfield be able to get the needed licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and begin construction in the next 18 months.

“One year ago when I visited the plant, looking at that half completed plant, looking at the problem,” he said. “You couldn’t ask for a better solution than that.”

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