Prep work underway in SC’s nuclear reboot effort
April 14, 2026
Photo courtesy of S.C. Nuclear Advisory Council
This article is published courtesy of the SC Daily Gazette
Potential $2.7B payday at least 2 years away
South Carolina’s state-owned utility company hopes to know by the first half of 2028 whether a $2.7 billion deal to revive the state’s failed nuclear expansion will officially go through.
Santee Cooper reached an initial agreement in December with New York investment firm Brookfield Asset Management for the purchase of two partially built nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer nuclear plant in Fairfield County.
But the ultimate date of the payment, which Santee Cooper plans to use to remove reactor-related debt from customers’ power bills, remains contingent on Brookfield finalizing its investment decision.
The project must still go through feasibility, engineering and other due diligence studies, as well as the federal regulatory process to license the reactors. A timeline for each of those steps will be set in June, Mike Finissi, Santee Cooper’s chief operations officer, told members of a state nuclear advisory group Monday.
Under the negotiated terms, Santee Cooper will maintain an ownership interest in the reactors of up to 25%. This would give customers access to the power the reactors would produce if completed.
Today, about 30 workers from Westinghouse, the original designer of the reactors, are on site doing research and prep work. Brookfield bought Westinghouse after the V.C. Summer failure sent it spiraling into bankruptcy.
“A lot of energy and things are moving along,” Finissi said.
If all goes according to plan, the funds could hit Santee Cooper’s bank account sometime between January and June two years from now, Finissi estimated.
But a lot of work remains between now and then that could easily sideline the deal.
Santee Cooper and the now defunct South Carolina Electric & Gas started construction on the two first-of-their-kind nuclear reactors alongside an existing unit near rural Jenkinsville in early 2013. But the project was riddled with delays, cost overruns and fraud that led to multiple federal convictions of former executives.
The utilities abandoned the plant’s expansion in 2017, but not before jointly spending $9 billion on the reactors that never produced a single megawatt.
Santee Cooper’s share of the debt was $3.6 billion, which customers so far continue to pay for on their monthly bills. The Brookfield deal could erase all but $1 billion of that.
