South Carolina Abandons Nuclear Power Plant Project

[n2doc]

BY SAMMY FRETWELL


JULY 31, 2017 12:50 PM

COLUMBIA, SC
After working nine years to expand a nuclear power plant in South Carolina, Santee Cooper and SCE&G said Monday they are pulling out of the $14 billion reactor project in Fairfield County in the wake of rising costs, falling demand for energy, construction delays and the bankruptcy of lead contractor Westinghouse this past spring.

SCE&G said in a news relase that a comprehensive review of the Fairfield County nuclear project — a review that began after Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy — caused the company to conclude that finishing the two nuclear reactors “would be prohibitively expensive.”

“We arrived at this very difficult but necessary decision following months of evaluating the project from all persectives,” SCANA Chairman and CEO Kevin Marsh said in the news release.

He said several factors beyond the company’s control have changed since the construction project was launched, including the Westinghouse bankruptcy. Still,. SCANA had considered building just one of the reactors, but rejected that plan after Santee Cooper withdrew from the project.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/news/local/article164544862.html#storylink=cpy

[tonyt53]

1. Some of the project can be salvaged by using the turbines and generators in a combined cycle gas

plant.

[SCantiGOP]

2. Another utility mothballed a nuke plant decades ago

They used the containment vessel that had been built to film the movie "The Abyss." After about 20 years, they are now finishing it. So yes, they will likely use the equipment but the huge expense of the site work will be there in the event they want to go back to the project later.
Ironically, the reason the two utilities committed to the project years ago was that the forecast was that natural gas would not be an affordable or reliable source for power plants. So it's anyone's guess (or expert opinion) as to what the situation may be in 10 years.

[kristopher]

3. That isn't accurate.

These plants were predicated on pure hopium. The nuclear lobby's planning effort was predicated on at least ten proof of concept plants in the initial wave and there were supposed to be lots more following behind those.

Lots and lots of analysts predicted exactly the economic quagmire that they got themselves into - included among those analysts were all those other planning efforts that were happening at the same time SC and GA were pushing forward.

[Massacure]

4. The low cost of natural gas caught a lot of utilities by surprise

It seems to me that I've seen a couple articles over the last few years about coal power plants being scrapped. In fact, I remember an article a couple weeks ago about a company spending several billion dollars on a recently completed coal plant and now they are converting it to natural gas.

[Kolesar]

5. I don't know who gets stuck with the stranded cost

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-31/scana-to-cease-construction-of-two-reactors-in-south-carolina

“I’m sure there will be customer outrage,” Stacy Nemeroff, a Princeton, New Jersey-based analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence said by phone Monday. “The regulators have been pretty accommodating about delays and cost overruns, but how they’ll deal with a canceled project is unclear.”

[mackdaddy]

6. Well I think it will be like always, The Ratepayers get stuck with the bill...

Not the investors, and certainly not the executives behind all of this.

Here in Ohio we ratepayers get to pay for two unprofitable coal burners just this year. And we got to pay for the extra billions for the Zimmer "nuclear" plant near Cinnci that was so poorly built it could never be approved for nuclear so they put a coal burner in. We rate payers got stuck holding the bag.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Zimmer_Power_Station