The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday approved a licence for Scana Corp to build two reactors at the Summer nuclear station in South Carolina, the agency's second approval of additional nuclear units to be built in two months after a 30-year construction hiatus.
Scana and its partner, state-owned electric agency Santee Cooper, want to build two AP1000 reactors at the Summer site near Jenkinsville, at a projected cost of $9 billion. The 1,100-megawatt units are expected to begin operating in 2017 and 2018. Friday's action "is a significant event for our company and marks the culmination of an intense review by the NRC," said Kevin Marsh, Scana's chief executive, in a statement. In February, the NRC approved Southern Co's proposed Vogtle reactors in a 4-1 vote.
No nuclear power plants have been licensed in the United States since 1979 when the partial meltdown of the reactor core of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania led to design changes that caused construction costs for nuclear plants to skyrocket and other projects to be cancelled.
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