By Kennedy Maize
Last week (Oct. 24), the state-owned South Carolina Public Service Authority, universally known as Santee Cooper, picked New York’s Brookfield Asset Management (BAM:NYSE) for negotiations over buying the remains of the public power system’s massively failed V.C. Summer nuclear project to bring it back to life.
Santee Cooper and investor-owned Scana Corp. (née South Carolina Electric & Gas) abandoned the two two-unit, 2,000-MW Westinghouse reactor project eight years ago amidst a scandal that cost $9 billion, sent officials to jail, and resulted in the demise of Scana. Santee Cooper was left holding a financially and politically messy bag.
Santee Cooper and Brookfield signed a letter of intent which, according to Santee Cooper, is designed “to guide final, exclusive negotiations with Brookfield concerning the two partially built AP1000 nuclear units in Fairfield County, SC.” The letter sets out a six-week “initial project feasibility period.”
According to the letter, Santee Cooper and Brookfield will “select a project manager and evaluate construction providers that would be used in resuming construction of the two nuclear units. The six weeks also would allow for advanced discussions with entities interested in buying nuclear power generated by the units and facilitate additional due diligence, leading to execution of a Memorandum of Understanding.”
Brookfield owns 51% of historic nuclear icon Westinghouse, which it formally acquired from Canada’s Cameco two years ago. Cameco is the world’s largest publicly traded uranium company. When Cameco bought Westinghouse in 2022, it was assisted by Brookfield Renewable Energy Partners (NYSE:BEP) which Brookfield Energy Management created in 2011. BAM owns 60% of BEP. It appears the BAM owns some 60% of Cameco through unidentified institutional investors.
The Brookfield choice is the result of a bidding process Santee Cooper began in January, with proposals due in May. The utility got 14 proposals, narrowed them down to five, and then selected Brookfield. Santee Cooper has said from the start that it does not intend to own or operate the units should they come back into service.
The nascent deal between Santee Cooper and Brookfield has political background on both sides of the U.S. and Canadian border. In its news release announcing the Brookfield deal, government-owned Santee Cooper thanked “Governor Henry McMaster and the South Carolina General Assembly members who were instrumental in encouraging Santee Cooper to conduct this bidding process.”
As Congress was considering President Trump’s omnibus “Big Bill” this year, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham took credit for keeping Biden administration’s nuclear tax credits in the legislation. The House had zeroed them out. Graham, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said, “The tax credits make all the difference.” Graham is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
North of the border, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was an executive at Brookfield Asset Management from 2020 until early 2025, when he entered politics, became leader of the Liberal Party after the political demise of Justin Trudeau in March, and prime minister of Canada. He was directly involved in the Cameco deal to buy Westinghouse.
Looking into the process that Santee Cooper used to select a V.C. Summer necromancer, the feisty South Carolina FITSNEWS web-based news site, which has long been hostile to Santee Cooper, reported on questions about how Santee Cooper ran the selection, which an unsuccessful finalist, The Nuclear Company, raised. The company withdrew its proposal, the news service said, the day before Brookfield was selected.
The Nuclear Company founder Jonathan Webb wrote to the Santee Cooper board, “We are further concerned that the RFP process itself may have been fundamentally compromised by the evaluation of bids outside the established framework, by parties previously involved in the V.C. Summer project, and with access to information that the other parties did not have.”
The Nuclear Company, a two-year-old startup with ambitious claims but no nuclear track record, has revealed little about itself. The online newsletter TechCrunch claims the company has raised $70 million venture capital.
Should Santee Cooper and Brookfield finalize a deal, with actual money changing hands, rather than letters and memoranda, Brookfield will have a difficult task ahead. Santee Cooper says it made a “strategic decision” in 2017 to maintain the equipment on site. CEO Jimmie Staton said, “The state of the units, and the fact that they use the same Westinghouse AP1000 technology that is now operating in Georgia and overseas, make these assets very attractive to the nuclear power industry.”
Nevertheless, new owners and contractors will have to examine the equipment carefully. They will also need U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval, as the commission, at Scana’s request, terminated the combined construction and operating license in 2019.
Completing the two nuclear units likely will cost considerably more than the $9 billion spent so far, which South Carolina customers were already paying for under the state’s construction work in progress regulations. The first of the Summer AP1000 machines was 48% finished when the tools dropped, and the second under 30%. Georgia Power’s identical Vogtle nuclear program ultimately cost an estimated $35 billion, $17 billion over budget after 15 years of construction.
It isn’t clear where Brookfield would find a market for Summer’s electricity. If Santee Cooper doesn’t take the output, which it has said is its plan, Brookfield, or whoever actually runs the plant, could contract with Virginia-based Dominion Energy, which bought the bankrupt Scana in wake of the Summer debacle.
Getting the plant delivering electricity to ultimate customers could set off a dispute at the Public Service Commission of South Carolina. The South Carolina Office of Regulatory Staff, which officially represents consumers before the PSC, could challenge a rate plan.