South Carolina’s attorney general and House of Representatives have asked the State Law Enforcement Division to open a criminal investigations into the utilities that wasted $9 billion in a failed attempt to build two nuclear reactors in Fairfield County. The requests to open a state probe come less than a week after SCANA and Santee Cooper announced they were subpoenaed for records by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and a Post and Courier investigation discovered Westinghouse, the primary contractor at V.C. Summer Nuclear Station, used unlicensed workers to design the nuclear reactors — a potentially criminal offense.
Post and Courier 25th Sept 2017 read more »
The U.S. nuclear power industry could be out of business by the middle of the century. The entire existing fleet of reactors may disappear by 2055 when the last operating license expires, S&P Global Ratings said in a report. That’s assuming there will be no license extensions. Half of the country’s 99 nuclear units may be retired in 17 years, S&P said. The report comes on the heels of a decision by Scana Corp. to abandon plans to build two new reactors in South Carolina after costs soared to more than $20 billion and the contractor Westinghouse Electric Co. went bankrupt. Nuclear operators have been shutting plants as their profits have been eroded by generators burning cheap natural gas and by weak demand for electricity.
Bloomberg 25th Sept 2017 read more »
