Santee Cooper steams ahead with plans to restart V.C. Summer nuclear project
Santee Cooper, the state owned power company that is considering the restart of a failed nuclear construction project, is moving ahead with efforts to crank up work on two partially built atomic reactors northwest of Columbia.
At the Santee Cooper board’s meeting Friday in Pinopolis, staff members said phase one of a study is at an end and the agency is planning to shift gears toward eventual completion of the project that shut down nearly a decade ago amid rising costs and construction delays.
The company’s efforts keep the project on track, adding momentum to possible completion of the stalled effort.
“We are moving forward to phase 2,’’ Santee Cooper chief executive Jimmy Staton said. “That is a huge step for us to get through that initial phase and move onto phase 2.’’
The phases are part of a roughly two-year feasibility study, where Brookfield Asset Management and Santee Cooper determine whether to move forward with completing the V.C. Summer nuclear reactors. The utility and Brookfield are on track to complete the study by March 2028, said Michael Finissi, Santee Cooper’s deputy chief executive.
“At that point in time, you’ll say, okay, how much is this going to cost? How long is it going to take? Do we want to proceed with the project?” Finissi said in an interview Friday afternoon.
He said the company was feeling “bullish” heading toward the final investment date. Then, the utility and Brookfield will craft an agreement to complete the two nuclear reactors at V.C. Summer. Santee Cooper is expected to sell the assets for about $2.7 billion and 25% of the eventual power generated.
In addition to state legislators, South Carolina’s electric cooperatives are interested in seeing the project completed, in part because their members might receive part of the $2.7 billion. Much of Santee Cooper’s power goes to electric cooperatives for distribution to cooperative members.
Rob Hochstetler, chief executive at Central Electric Power Cooperative, released a statement saying that “while a final decision is a long ways off, it’s exciting this deal could reduce the V.C. Summer cost burden for South Carolina co-op members.’’ He noted the reactors could produce carbon free power.
The demand for power has stirred interest in revitalizing the project and Santee Cooper is working with Brookfield Asset Management to study how the effort can be completed.
Friday was the deadline for Brookfield to report to Santee Cooper on the initial feasibility of completing the reactors.
The project would restart construction on two nuclear reactors that were never finished at the V.C. Summer site in Fairfield County. The nuclear site has one reactor that was licensed in the 1980s.
Finissi, the deputy chief executive, told the Santee Cooper board that officials with the Nuclear Energy Institute had toured the site several weeks ago, “generating a lot of enthusiasm.’’ The institute is an association that favors the expansion of nuclear power.
Finissi noted that the second phase of the project is ‘imminent,’ ’’ with the utility just waiting for paperwork to finalize an engineering, procurement and construction contractor to be completed.
In phase 1, a project manager and the engineering, procurement and construction contractor were selected, an economic development study was completed and loan applications were prepared, Finissi said. Brookfield also spent the last several months evaluating the site to ensure it could feasibly finish the nuclear reactors.
“You go out, and you look at the site, you see the energy of the people out there, things coming together, and then also you’re starting to see the landscape change a little bit as we move forward, which is very exciting for us,” Finissi said.
The initial V.C. Summer expansion project proved to be one of the largest, if not the largest, construction failures in South Carolina history.
The project was forecast to cost about $11 billion, but as work continued, costs had risen to more than $20 billion. Work on the new reactors was about four years behind schedule and the effort was facing increasing troubles, prompting Santee Cooper and then-partner SCE&G to walk away from the project in July 2017 after $9 billion had been spent.
The ensuing outcry over the failure incensed ratepayers who had been paying higher power bills to fund the two new reactors and it prompted legislative and criminal investigations. Top SCE&G executives were criminally prosecuted after they were accused of failing to fully inform the public and investors about troubles that had erupted. The company continued to say all was on schedule, even when the project was not.
Legislators later approved changes in the law in an effort to make sure a similar failure did not happen again. But since then, as pressure has risen to provide more power, particularly for data centers and new development, efforts have been launched to revive the construction project. Last year, Gov. Henry McMaster urged Congress to support finishing the work.
If the project is completed, Santee Cooper would receive about 25 percent of the power from the plants, as well as $2.7 billion that it has said could be provided to customers as rebates for the initial cost of the reactor project years ago.
Santee Cooper chose Brookfield to finish the nuclear reactors after an extensive vetting process last fall. It will still take more than a year for Brookfield and Santee Cooper to strike a final investment deal as the feasibility period continues.
Santee Cooper also hired a project manager to finish the V.C. Summer nuclear reactors in May. Brookfield Asset Management and South Carolina-based startup The Nuclear Company are working together.
Finissi said The Nuclear Company had an experienced project management team, including “a lot” of individuals who worked on Project Vogtle in Georgia that can serve as advisers. The nuclear reactors at Project Vogtle are the same AP1000 Westinghouse models slated to be built at V.C. Summer. The Vogtle project also faced cost overruns and multiyear delays.
The V.C. Summer Nuclear expansion is a 2,200 megawatt effort that is among several major generation projects under way in South Carolina. Santee Cooper and Dominion Energy also are working jointly to build a 2,200 megawatt natural gas plant in Colleton County. Work on that project has begun, officials said Friday. Santee Cooper also is working on a natural gas plant in Anderson County.
This story was originally published June 26, 2026 at 2:24 PM.
