Construction projects go over budget and fall behind schedule. Whether it’s new homes or highways or factories, it’s nearly inevitable: because contractors underestimate the cost, purchasers want to make changes, inflation continues apace and extra time means extra money.

South Carolinians certainly learned about cost overruns during the fiasco that was the attempt by SCANA Corp. and Santee Cooper to build two reactors at the V.C. Summer nuclear plant. The price started out at $10 billion, and construction was supposed to be completed by 2013; by the time the utilities pulled the plug in 2017, they had already sunk $9 billion into the project, which was less than half completed and at least seven years behind schedule. Today, after an eight-year pause, it’s expected to cost an additional $20 billion to complete the reactors.

So there’s not a lot we or the Legislature can do about new projections that show the cost to build the natural gas plant near Canadys that the Legislature green-lighted this spring already has doubled since the two utilities told lawmakers last year it would cost $2.5 billion.

As Columbia’s State newspaper reports, Santee Cooper and SCANA successor Dominion Energy attributed the new $5 billion price tag to tariffs and the skyrocketing demand (and cost) for new power plants, driven mostly by the AI data centers that our Legislature refuses to stop S.C. governments from paying to lure here.

The result is that electricity bills will be even higher than we expected for Santee Cooper customers, although we can hope they might be offset by rate reductions from Santee Cooper’s proposed sale of the abandoned nuclear reactors to the New York investment firm Brookfield Asset Management.

There’s no such relief in sight for Dominion customers, who will be hit even harder because of the other thing we learned from the V.C. Summer fiasco: Investor-owned utilities make most of their profit by building new plants and power lines and other stuff to deliver electricity to our homes.

So as Dominion spends twice as much constructing the gas plant, it stands to make twice as much in profit as legislators assumed when they approved the joint venture.

But there is something the Legislature can do about the higher bills the Canadys cost overruns will cost Dominion customers.

Among the Legislature’s many gifts to utilities this year were provisions that potentially increase the profit that our state guarantees to investor-owned utilities. Since those changes were based on assumptions that have so clearly changed, the Legislature should reassess the law.

We don’t begrudge Dominion and Duke the right to make a profit. But there’s a limit to just how generous that profit should be. Recall, after all, that both are regulated because they are monopolies: If you live in their service area, you have no choice but to buy your electricity from them. That’s a pretty big benefit that a lot of businesses would be happy to take in return for regulations on how much they can charge.

On top of that, our Legislature has refused to pass any restrictions on the utilities’ efforts to entice those data centers — which in turn increase their need to build more profit-generating generation capacity. Dominion has gone so far as to offer extra-low rates to Google’s data centers. Santee Cooper, by contrast, has adopted a new rate plan designed to protect other customers from having to subsidize the extra generation capacity it has to build or purchase for new data centers.

COLUMBIA — South Carolina’s state-owned utility is entering negotiations with a New York investment firm to finish partially built nuclear reactors abandoned eight years ago.

Santee Cooper’s governing board voted unanimously Friday to allow the power company’s management team to officially begin negotiating with Brookfield Asset Management on an agreement to restart construction of the failed expansion project at the V.C. Summer nuclear plant in Fairfield County.

Brookfield, which boasts a $1 trillion global investment portfolio, was among more than 70 companies to express interest after Santee Cooper put a call out nine months ago. It was a partner on one of 15 proposals Santee Cooper ultimately reviewed.

Negotiations will continue over the next six weeks, CEO Jimmy Staton said. Santee Cooper will name the other partners on the project at a later date.

Santee Cooper did not make public the potential terms of the deal, expected to be valued in the billions.

But Staton said Santee Cooper would use any cash proceeds it may earn from the agreement to pay down debts still owed on the abandoned nuclear facility. Customers could also benefit from the power the reactors would produce if finished.

In June, Staton told the Daily Gazette customers shouldn’t expect to see the debt come off their power bills, but his earlier predictions have changed.

“I feel pretty confident that our customers will realize some fairly significant value, both rates wise and otherwise, in this process,” Staton told reporters after Friday’s meeting.

Santee Cooper and the now defunct South Carolina Electric & Gas started construction on the two first-of-their-kind nuclear reactors alongside an existing unit near rural Jenkinsville in early 2013. But the project was riddled with delays, cost overruns and fraud that led to multiple federal convictions of former executives.

The utilities abandoned the plant’s expansion in 2017, but not before jointly spending $9 billion on the reactors that never produced a single megawatt.

Santee Cooper’s share of the debt was $3.6 billion, which customer continue to pay for on their monthly bills. Those payments could continue, in part or in full, through 2032, depending how much money Santee Cooper can secure for a buy down in any final deal with Brookfield.

If the two companies manage to ink a contract, Staton pledged that Santee Cooper customers will face no new costs associated with the project. All of that will be borne by Brookfield, as well as big tech companies, such as Google or Meta, that could buy the nuclear power a finished plant would generate.

“We’ve protected the rate payers of South Carolina, and quite frankly, I think we’ve shifted the paradigm of how nuclear energy gets built here in the United States,” Staton said.

After the firms mothballed the reactors eight years ago, SCE&G’s parent company, SCANA, collapsed. The reactors’ designer, Westinghouse, spiraled into bankruptcy.

Virginia-headquartered Dominion Energy bought up SCANA.

Dominion is not part of the deal, so it won’t at all pay down debt saddled to its 800,000 South Carolina customers. They’ll continue to pay over the next 14 years for $2.3 billion worth of debt from the abandoned expansion.

And it was Santee Cooper’s potential new partner, Brookfield, that took over Westinghouse in 2018.

To restart construction, Santee Cooper and Brookfield will need to find a construction firm. Westinghouse, which remains a part of Brookfield’s investment portfolio, won’t be the builder this time, Staton said.

It will take a year or more of due diligence, licensing and permitting before any construction on the inactive plants can restart, Staton added.

Among the funds Brookfield manages is a portfolio focused on clean energy and decarbonization. Earlier this month, the firm announced it had raised $20 billion for the effort.

The move to restart V.C. Summer follows calls by Gov. Henry McMaster earlier this year for a “nuclear power renaissance” in the state.

And U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has vowed his support for the effort, which will ultimately have to make its way through the federal regulatory process.

Staton also pointed to a May executive order signed by President Donald Trump, which calls on the Department of Energy to prioritize approvals for 10 large-scale nuclear reactors under construction by 2030.

“South Carolina is going to have number one and number two in that process,” Staton said. “You have placed South Carolina in the epicenter of the resurgence of nuclear in the United States.”

Still, nuclear power projects are expensive and take years to complete.

Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, operated by Southern Co. in Georgia, started construction around the same time as V.C. Summer. Work on the expansion wrapped up last year. Today the site is the nation’s largest nuclear plant, with four reactors.

But adding the two newest reactors cost more than $30 billion, more than twice the initial estimates.

South Carolina’s state-owned utility is looking to a private company to revive a project to build two nuclear power plants that was abandoned eight years ago, losing more than $9 billion without generating a watt of power.

Santee Cooper’s board agreed Friday to start six weeks of negotiations with Brookfield Asset Management that they hope will lead to a deal that lets the private company build the nuclear plants at the V.C. Summer site near Jenkinsville at their own risk to generate power that they could mostly sell to whom they want, such as energy-gobbling data centers.

Santee Cooper said Brookfield preliminarily agreed to provide the utility with some of the power generated. But that and probably thousands of other details will have to be negotiated. In a twist, Brookfield took over the assets of Westinghouse Electric Co., which had to declare bankruptcy because of difficulties building new nuclear reactors.

Utility officials said the agreement gives hope the state can get something out of a debacle that led to four executives going to prison or home confinement for lying to regulators, shareholders, ratepayers and investigators and left millions of people paying for decades for a project that never produced electricity.

“The risk to the ratepayer is nil. The risk to the taxpayer is nil,” Santee Cooper Board Chairman Peter McCoy said.

There are still too many hurdles for the project to get past to consider this a win right now, said Tom Clements, executive director of the nuclear watchdog group Savannah River Site Watch.

After eight years in the elements, all the equipment and the structure of the plant, which was less than halfway finished, will need to be carefully inspected before it can be used. The permits to build and the licenses to operate the nuclear plants will need to be renewed, likely starting from scratch, Clements said.

“I still believe that the cost, technical and regulatory hurdles are too big to lead to completion of the project,” Clements said, adding the agreement appears to let Brookfield walk away if it decide it’s not feasible.

Santee Cooper heard from 70 bidders and received 15 formal proposals to restart construction of the reactors. Interest in the project has grown as power demand in the U.S. surges with the increase in data centers as artificial intelligence technology develops.

Santee Cooper executives credited President Donald Trump’s executive order in May calling for the U.S. to quadruple the amount of power generated by nuclear plants over the next 25 years for opening the door to the potential agreement.

“You have placed South Carolina in the epicenter of the resurgence of nuclear power in the United States,” Santee Cooper CEO Jimmy Staton said.

Santee Cooper was the minority partner with what was then South Carolina Electric and Gas when construction on the two new nuclear plants started in 2013 at the V.C. Summer site — about 25 miles northeast of Columbia — where SCE&G was already operating a reactor.

The project needed to be finished in seven years to get tax credits to keep the project’s cost from overwhelming the utilities, but it ended up behind schedule almost immediately.

Executives lied about the problems to keep money coming in. Taxpayers and ratepayers ended up on the hook because of a state law that allowed the utilities to charge for costs before any power was generated.

Two nuclear reactors built in a similar way in Georgia went $17 billion over budget before they were fully operational in 2023.

Santee Print Works, a longtime Sumter textile plant, will shut down Dec. 20 after 76 years, citing global competition and a shrinking customer base.

SUMTER, S.C. — After more than seven decades in business, a longtime Sumter textile manufacturer is shutting down.

Santee Print Works has been a fixture in the community since the late 1940s. But after more than 76 years, the company says it will close its doors for good this December.

Company officials confirmed to News19 that employees and state labor agencies were notified on Monday, October 20, about the closure, which is set for December 20.

Administrator Everette Harrington said in a statement that the closure was due to global competition and a shrinking customer base.

“A decision to close in the next few months was a hard and disappointing one for ownership to make. Santee has done all they could to keep the plant going," Harrington said. "Due to the textile market, customer base which has not been there for quite a while, this is why the decision to close has been decided.”

Documents filed with the state’s employment agency show that approximately 140 employees will be affected by the closure.

Nearby businesses say they’re shocked by the announcement and concerned about what it means for the workers who will soon be out of a job.

“That is super unfortunate anytime you hear about a business closing. Its not good, especially a staple of Sumter, and its right there at Christmas, so I hope they have something in place for the employees to help them get through the holidays,” said Sumter resident Samantha Geddings.

“Well, I’ve been at Sylvia Jo’s for eight years, and we’ve been next to Santee’s and passed by there since I was a child. I’ve had many family members who’ve worked there come and eat with us and some who retired come eat. It's sad to see another Sumter business close and with the holidays, I feel bad when anyone loses their jobs,” said Amber Spencer, owner of Sylvia Jo’s Diner.

It is unknown at this time what will happen to the Santee Print Works facility following its closure in December.

Eight years after construction of two AP1000 reactors at the VC Summer site in South Carolina was abandoned, Santee Cooper has announced it is in negotiations with Brookfield Asset Management about the potential completion of the units.

"Final, exclusive negotiations" concerning the two partially built units are being guided by a Letter of Intent between the two companies, with a six-week initial project feasibility period during which the parties will jointly select a project manager and evaluate construction providers that would be used in resuming construction of the two nuclear units. The six weeks would also 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, Santee Cooper said.

Construction of two AP1000 units began at VC Summer in 2013. However, the owners of the Summer project - Scana subsidiary South Carolina Electric & Gas Company (SCE&G) and Santee Cooper - decided in August 2017 to abandon construction of the units following reactor vendor Westinghouse's filing for bankruptcy in March that year. Majority owner SCE&G (now Dominion Energy South Carolina) transferred its interest in the assets to Santee Cooper in 2018.

Earlier this year, Santee Cooper launched a competitive bidding process for the potential sale of the VC Summer assets to a third party who would complete the unfinished nuclear units. Initial expressions of interest were received from over 70 potential bidders, with 15 formal proposals submitted.

"Our goals include completing these reactors with private money and no ratepayer or taxpayer expense, delivering financial relief to our customers and gaining significant additional power capacity for South Carolina," Santee Cooper Board Chairman Peter McCoy said. "Brookfield’s proposal would do just that, and the company has the financial capability to stand behind its proposal."

"As we move closer to a final deal, our goal remains the same: to enable completion of these two units and thus provide 2,200 MW of carbon-free, reliable nuclear power that delivers energy security for South Carolina and specific benefits to Santee Cooper customers who are paying our initial investment," Santee Cooper President and CEO Jimmy Staton said, thanking Governor of South Carolina Henry McMaster and the South Carolina General Assembly members, who he said had been instrumental in encouraging Santee Cooper to conduct the bidding process.

The two-unit Vogtle plant in Georgia was at a similar stage of construction to Summer at the time the South Carolina project was abandoned. Vogtle's owners - Southern Company's Georgia Power, Oglethorpe Power, MEAG Power and Dalton Utilities - opted to continue with the project which saw Vogtle 3 and 4 become the first new nuclear units to be constructed in the USA in more than 30 years, with unit 3 entering commercial operation in 2023 and unit 4 in 2024.

A strategic decision to maintain the equipment after the project was abandoned now meant for a less costly path to completion, 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," he said. Brookfield is 51%-owner of Westinghouse, a fact which "added to Brookfield's proposal," he said.

According to Santee Cooper, completion of the two VC Summer units could generate thousands of temporary construction jobs and hundreds of highly skilled, permanent operational jobs, as well as strengthening and diversifying South Carolina’s energy portfolio, enhancing grid reliability, and helping attract new industries, bringing more jobs and other economic benefits.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved SCE&G's request to terminate the combined construction and operating licences for the units in 2019.