Around the States: South Carolina Abandons Costly Nuclear Plant

What burns up $9 billion in electricity customers’ money, and still gets its own plug pulled? The answer is two unfinished nuclear power plant units in South Carolina. They never produced a watt of electricity, construction work was halted in 2017, and now the South Carolina public utility Santee Cooper has officially given up its attempt to save the federal permits required to build the plants.

Santee Cooper’s board of directors voted last week to drop its year-long quest to find an investor — any investor — who would fill the gap left by original builder SCE&G when that utility’s board asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to accept its surrender of the plant’s construction license. The horrifically over-budget, behind-schedule plant is finally dead.

New commercial nuclear plant construction in the Carolinas is once again kaput. This time, the market killed utility pipe dreams of a nuclear “renaissance.” Will the power companies and elected policy-makers finally listen to environmentalists when we tell them again that renewable energy generation is the smart way to go?

Up next, Currituck Ends Solar Moratorium >>

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