FAIRFIELD COUNTY – A sales agreement approved Monday by Santee Cooper would remove $2.7 billion worth of debt from customers’ power bills as part of a major nuclear restart in South Carolina.
More than eight years after abandoning the project, the state-owned utility’s governing board unanimously passed an agreement, known as a memorandum of understanding, 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.
Santee Cooper and Brookfield must still go through feasibility and other due diligence studies, so the deal could still fall through.
Regardless, a date for the $2.7 billion payment is unknown.
It depends on Brookfield finalizing its investment decision. An estimated date won’t be set until June.
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.
Santee Cooper also expects Brookfield to use South Carolina companies and workers to complete construction.
And Brookfield must reimburse Santee Cooper for any past and future costs it racks up as part of the deal-making process. That could include money the utility spent on the consultants who helped it solicit proposals and sort through bids, as well as the cost of cleaning up the site for visitors.
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.
“Our customers have been paying for this,” Santee Cooper CEO Jimmy Staton said. “It’s time they got some value for it.”
With a $1 trillion global investment portfolio, Brookfield is seen by supporters of the nuclear reboot as a financially solvent partner capable of taking on the project expected to cost tens of billions of dollars.
“It’s a very attractive deal,” said Sen. Tom Davis.
The Beaufort Republican has been a champion of the effort to take the failed nuclear project from “a $9 billion hole in the ground” to a possible solution for South Carolina’s growing power needs.
“It’s all come to fruition in the best possible way for South Carolina,” he said.
