The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has scheduled a vote Friday widely expected to approve licenses for two new reactors at South Carolina’s Virgil C. Summer nuclear plant.
Scana subsidiary South Carolina Electric & Gas applied for a combined license to build two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors at the plant in 2008. Its safety and environmental reviews, delayed as regulators reviewed the AP1000’s revised aircraft impact protection, were completed last year. As the Nuclear Energy Institute’s Mark Flanagan put it in a blog post Monday, “These affirmation hearings take place after all issues have been advanced. This one is scheduled for 1:25 p.m. and will probably be done by 1:30. It’s basically a quick OK.”
Santee Cooper is also a minority partner in the $10.2 billion project. The site northwest of Columbia, S.C., currently hosts a single 966 megawatt Westinghouse pressurized water reactor licensed in 1982.
The reactors’ approval would follow the COL issued last month for two AP1000s at Plant Vogtle in Georgia – the first approvals for new reactors in the United States in 34 years.