A Senate hearing in South Carolina's capital Tuesday yielded no breakthroughs that could signal hope for breathing new life into the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station expansion project that was abandoned on July 31 by the project owners South Carolina Electric and Gas and state-owned utility Santee Cooper.
The most publicized hail-Mary to emerge from the financial turmoil that the two companies is a plan by Gov. Henry McMaster to sell either Santee Cooper outright or to sell it's 45 percent of the expansion project to complete at least one of the two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors left unfinished. But the hearing revealed opposition to that possibility, given Santee Cooper's portion of the project is saddled with $4 billion of debt, half of Santee Cooper's debt load.
Santee Cooper Board Chairman Leighton Lord said that no company would be willing to take on debt that large, which means if the company were sold taxpayers in the state would have to cover the debt. The state's Minority Leader Niki Setzler, D-West Columbia, said the legislature would not consider such an option. “We're not talking about putting $4 billion on the backs of South Carolina taxpayers,” Setzler said, as quoted by the Associated Press.
SCANA Chief Executive Officer Kevin Marsh, meanwhile, left the hearing just before his testimony was to begin, making a trip to the hospital due to severe distress brought on by a kidney stone condition. SCANA Chief Fnancial Officer Jimmy Addison covered for Marsh. He noted that rate hikes passed on to consumers – representing 18 percent of SCE&G utility bills – did not cover costs of the project, but only covered the cost of financing the debt for the project.
Senators approved a motion to issue a subpoena to review an Bechtel analysis on the project that was conducted in 2015. Said Senate Judiciary Chairman Luke Rankin, R-Conway, it was “vitally important” that the panel get to the bottom of what stopped the project from continuing. Rankin said the panel needed to know the “coulda, shoulda and woulda” of what happened.
South Carolina's House takes up the issue with its own hearing that begins Wednesday.