Santee Cooper, the big power provider in South Carolina, has tapped financial advisers to look for buyers that can restart construction on a pair of nuclear reactors that were mothballed years ago.
The state-owned utility is betting interest will be strong, with tech giants such as Amazon.com and Microsoft in need of clean energy to fuel data centers for artificial-intelligence capabilities.
The details
Santee Cooper announced Wednesday it is seeking proposals for buyers to complete the project at South Carolina’s sprawling V.C. Summer Nuclear Station, confirming an earlier report from The Wall Street Journal.
The utility is working with bankers at Centerview Partners, which will accept proposals until May 5.
Santee Cooper will likely look to tap a consortium that could include a construction firm, a tech company that will use the power and an additional partner for capital, according to people familiar with the matter. It is also looking for another power company partner because it doesn’t plan to own or operate the units once they are up and running.
The context
Construction of two nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer plant was halted in 2017 after Santee Cooper and the plant’s then-co-owner, South Carolina Electric & Gas—now part of Dominion Energy—had already jointly spent around $9 billion.
Nuclear-project builder Westinghouse Electric, a contractor at V.C. Summer, filed for bankruptcy that year, dealing a blow to the plans. The two reactors had been among the first American nuclear power projects in years and were supposed to be operational by 2019.
Santee Cooper owns 100% of the assets at the V.C. Summer plant today. The company expects to recover some of the $9 billion that was previously spent, the people familiar said. Completion of the reactors would then cost billions of dollars more over several years.
A number of big nuclear reactors had gone dark amid competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy. But growing demand for electricity, including that needed to power data centers, has renewed interest in nuclear plants.
Last year, Microsoft and Constellation Energy announced a deal to restart Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island. Google parent Alphabet also said it would back the construction of a handful of small nuclear reactors.
Amazon.com has signed deals to back nuclear-power projects, and Meta in December put out a request for proposals to team up with developers for nuclear energy in the U.S.
Plant Vogtle, operated by Southern Co. in Georgia, is the nation’s largest nuclear plant. Adding two new reactors at the site cost more than $30 billion, more than twice the initial estimates. Work on that plant finally wrapped up last year.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
