Brookfield Wins Bid to Restart Notorious Nuclear Reactor Project

This nuclear project was abandoned for financial reasons, but could now be restarted. (Courtesy Dominion Energy)

Key Points

• Brookfield Asset Management won a bid to complete two nuclear reactors in South Carolina, halted in 2017, marking a potential nuclear comeback.
• Santee Cooper states Brookfield’s proposal ensures ratepayers will not incur additional costs for the previously abandoned V.C. Summer project.
• The deal, currently a letter of intent, involves a six-week feasibility review and potential power sales to entities like data center operators.

Brookfield Asset Management won a bidding process on Friday to complete two nuclear reactors in South Carolina that had been stopped midway through construction in 2017.

The restart would be the most dramatic example yet of a nuclear comeback in the U.S. The South Carolina project was considered a symbol of nuclear’s failures—it was abandoned for financial reasons, and some executives involved with the original project pleaded guilty to fraud charges. Electricity customers were left on the hook for billions of dollars worth of costs, even though they weren’t even getting any power from the reactors. It was casually referred to as “nukegate.”

This project won’t suffer the same fate, according to Santee Cooper, the publicly owned utility that led the bidding process. Management said Brookfield’s proposal will ensure that ratepayers don’t incur any more costs. “You have placed South Carolina in the epicenter of the resurgence of nuclear in the United States, and under a model that removes the risk from the customers” and taxpayers, Santee Cooper President and CEO Jimmy Staton told the utility’s board after it voted to approve the deal.

Brookfield has two ways to make money from the reactor project—it can sell power from the plants, and it also owns a majority stake in the private company that designed them, Westinghouse Nuclear. Brookfield stock was up 1.9% on the announcement, which didn’t include financial terms. Uranium miner Cameco also owns a stake in Westinghouse and was up 1.6%.

There’s still much to do before construction starts on the project, which is located at a site near Columbia, S.C., known as V.C. Summer, that already has one working reactor. So far, the deal is a letter of intent and not a final contract to start the work. In the next six weeks, Brookfield and Santee Cooper will undertake a “project feasibility” review, and potentially try to ink deals with power buyers—which could include data center operators. Already, Microsoft and Meta have signed special deals with nuclear operators.

The addition of two reactors will add 2.2 gigawatts of power to the state’s grid, enough for around two million homes or some very large data centers. South Carolina is seeing surging demand for power from tech companies and other users.

Write to Avi Salzman at avi.salzman@barrons.com