Santee Cooper, South Carolina’s state-owned electric and water utility, has launched a Request for Proposals (RFP) to acquire and complete or propose alternatives for two partially constructed generating units at the Virgil C Summer Nuclear Power Station in Fairfield County, South Carolina.

Santee has contracted Centerview Partners LLC to conduct the RFP, seeking parties interested in acquiring the project and related assets.

Responses to the RFP are due by May 5, 2025.

Data center operators are putting nuclear power into the site selection mix. Image courtesy of The Creative Commons
– The Creative Commons

The decision to revive the mothballed units is the result of “advanced manufacturing investments, AI-driven data center demand, and the tech industry's zero-carbon targets," according to president and CEO of Santee Cooper, Jimmy Staton. "Considering the long timelines required to bring new nuclear units online, Santee Cooper has a unique opportunity to explore options for Summer Units 2 and 3 and their related assets that could allow someone to generate reliable, carbon emissions-free electricity on a meaningfully shortened timeline."

If constructed, the two units could deliver 2.2GW of nuclear capacity. The company claims that its location within the nuclear security “envelope” of the VC Summer station site and access to ample land, water, and transmission infrastructure will allow the project to be completed on an accelerated timeline.

The nuclear power station provides energy to customers of Santee Cooper and Dominion Energy.

The VC station currently has one operational unit with a capacity of 973MW. The original expansion of the site commenced in 2008 when Santee Cooper - then known as South Carolina Electric & Gas - applied to build two 1.1GW AP1000 pressurized water reactors on site. The following year, the utility signed an engineering, procurement, and construction contract with Westinghouse to construct the reactors, with costs estimated at $9.8 billion.

Construction on Unit 2 began in March 2013, and Unit 3 in November 2013. However, due to spiraling costs, Westinghouse filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in early 2017. After an extensive review, the decision to abandon the project was made in July 2017.

Growing energy demands from data centers have fuelled a renewed interest in nuclear energy as a low-carbon and reliable energy source.

Last year, both Microsoft and AWS signed high-profile supply agreements with nuclear power plants to power their operations.

AWS acquired Talen Energy’s data center campus next to Pennsylvania's 2.5GW Susquehanna Steam Electric Station nuclear power plant in March. However, in November, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected a proposed interconnection service agreement for the nuclear power station to support an expanded colocated load at the AWS data center.

In September, Microsoft signed a 20-year PPA to offtake the entire capacity of the revived three-mile island nuclear power plant. Constellation Energy hopes to open the 837MW facility in 2028, which was shut in 2019 due to high capital costs.

In December, Meta launched an RFP to identify potential nuclear energy developers to support 1.4GW of new nuclear generation capacity to power its operations across the US.

Several other US utilities have also floated the idea of restarting nuclear plants to power the data center market. In October, NextEra reported that it was considering restarting the Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa due to strong interest from data centers.

More in North America