Plans to restart construction of VC Summer reactors gain traction

Reuters

4 hours ago

July 3 - South Carolina's state-owned utility and project owner Santee Cooper has selected 'fewer than five' proposals from 14 received in a request for interest (RFI) to potentially acquire and finish building the reactors, which sit next to Dominion Energy's Summer 1, an active reactor, a Santee Cooper spokesperson told Reuters Events.
The selected entities will now conduct additional due diligence and submit final proposals for Santee Cooper's evaluation.
"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," the spokesperson said.
In May, Santee Coooper said it received a 'robust' response to the RFI, with applications from "leading construction, financial, utility, and technology firms from around the world,' and that a detailed review of the proposals would take 9 to 18 months to complete.
When construction of Summer 2 and 3 was cancelled in 2017 due mainly to cost overruns and the bankruptcy of the primary contractor, Westinghouse, over $9 billion had been spent to complete less than 50% of the reactors.
However, in recent years strong demand for clean power from hyperscale data centers and decarbonization efforts has led to new investments to restart mothballed reactors. Holtec International is set to restart the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan later this year and Constellation Energy aims to reopen the Three Mile Island Unit 1 in New York in 2027.
CHART: Growth in commercial sector power consumption by state (2019-2023)
In May, President Trump issued a raft of executive orders to usher in a 'nuclear renaissance' and said the U.S. aims to initiate the construction of 10 new large reactors by 2030. The new policies are part of government efforts to expand U.S. nuclear energy capacity from around 100 GW today to 400 GW by 2050.
Thanks to the advanced stage of construction and existing infrastructure on-site, VC Summer 2 and 3 could be among this batch of new reactors.
Following an inspection in September 2024, the South Carolina Nuclear Advisory Council (SCNAC) concluded that the site was in mostly 'excellent condition,' with unit 2 at approximately 48% completion and unit 3 with 'significantly less' completion.
'There is an extensive inventory of materials, assemblies and electrical and instrumentation systems that is well maintained and inventoried in a series of warehouses,' the council noted.
This assessment suggests that VC Summer 2 and 3 could be "the easiest new large nuclear site" to be completed in the U.S., according to Adam Stein, director of Nuclear Energy Innovation at the Breakthrough Institute.
"A significant amount of work has already been done, many long lead-time components are still on site ready to be used,' he told Reuters Events. 'If you can get around the other challenges such as public perception and state-level government approval, then this is, in terms of large nuclear plants in the U.S., the low-hanging fruit.'
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Between 80% and 90% of the hard parts required to complete the project are still in inventory, Santee Cooper's director of Nuclear Development, Steve Nance, said during a SCNAC public meeting on March 31.
After construction of VC Summer 2 and 3 was terminated, Santee Cooper and Westinghouse agreed to sell parts of the AP1000s under construction to other sites overseas, but many components have not yet been delivered.
'These parts are earmarked for Ukraine, which I don't need to tell you, is quite sensitive in terms of how that may ever actually go to fruition or not," Nance told the SCNAC meeting, adding that commercial commitments on those parts expire if they are not withdrawn "by a certain date."
Some long-lead items still available at the site include four circulating pipes, part of the simulator, and most of the transformers needed, according to Nance.
Lessons from Vogtle 3 and 4
Vogtle 3 and 4 in neighboring Georgia were concluded in 2023 and 2024, respectively, approximately seven years after the original estimated completion date, with costs more than doubling from the initial projection of $14 billion.
They were the first U.S. nuclear projects to feature the Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactors, the same Generation III+ pressurized water reactors that would be installed in VC Summer 2 and 3.
CHART: US nuclear power capacity additions by year of initial operation
The delays that hampered Vogtle 3 and 4 were in part related to reactor design changes, with around 200 license amendments with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that resulted in construction halts while waiting for reviews and approvals, according to Stein.
But VC Summer 2 and 3 are unlikely to face the same type of delays thanks to the knowledge acquired following the completion of the Vogtle projects.
'Vogtle units 3 and 4 showed that AP1000s can be built. There are a lot of lessons learned that came out of that project that could presumably be leveraged to make sure that future AP1000s go more smoothly and faster and at lower costs,' said Sidney Fowler, energy attorney at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman law firm in Washington, DC.
The supply chain and construction expertise developed for the construction of Vogtle 3 and 4 is still available to complete VC Summer 2 and 3, according to Keith Drudy, chief commercial officer at nuclear technology firm Studsvik Scandpower and chair of the Operations and Power Division of the American Nuclear Society.
Strong momentum
A long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) with a hyperscaler – as is the case with Three Mile Island, which signed a 20-year PPA with Microsoft in September – could further strengthen the economics of the project, said Drudy.
"I'd say now will be the time to build additional AP1000s. Every day that we wait, we lose momentum," said Drudy, who has worked for Westinghouse and the Vogtle 3 and 4 projects. "We are in a very good place for a reasonably low-risk large capital project," he added.
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A May 23 Trump executive order instructing the NRC to accelerate construction and operation permits for new reactors could help ensure that VC Summer 2 and 3 are completed in a timely manner.
"The regulatory case is pretty rock-solid for this one. Some of the things that folks putting together this project would need to keep an eye on is the availability of large components. As long as that is on the schedule, I think it can mimic the work done at Vogtle and speed up through lessons learned," said Katy Huff, associate professor of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The upward trend in electricity prices caused partly by the increase in demand supports nuclear deployment – the Energy Information Administration forecasts a 7% increase in average wholesale electricity prices across most regions in 2025.
'The biggest risk to any nuclear project is a dramatic drop in electricity prices which undercuts the economic case for the project, and right now we are not going in that direction,' Huff said.