The Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Power Station occupies a site near

Jenkinsville, South Carolina Jenkinsville is an incorporated town in western Fairfield County, South Carolina, United States, between the Broad and the Little rivers. It is located east of Monticello Reservoir and is near the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station. Also ...

, in Fairfield County, South Carolina, approximately northwest of

Columbia Columbia may refer to: * Columbia (personification), the historical female national personification of the United States, and a poetic name for America Places North America Natural features * Columbia Plateau, a geologic and geographic region i ...

. The plant has one Westinghouse 3-loop

Pressurized Water Reactor A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a type of light-water nuclear reactor. PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan and Canada). In a PWR, the primary coolant (water) i ...

, which has received approval of a 20-year license extension, taking the license expiration of Unit 1 from 2022 to 2042. Its cooling water is supplied by the

Monticello Reservoir Monticello is a reservoir in the U.S. state of South Carolina, built to provide water for the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station.pumped storage (hydroelectric) unit. The plant utilizes a once-through cooling system. South Carolina Electric and Gas was also in the process of constructing two Westinghouse

AP1000 The AP1000 is a nuclear power plant designed and sold by Westinghouse Electric Company. The plant is a pressurized water reactor with improved use of passive nuclear safety and many design features intended to lower its capital cost and impr ...

plants, which had been scheduled to go into service in 2020, but construction on these was abandoned in 2017. The

nuclear power station A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a generator that produces ele ...

also includes the decommissioned experimental Carolinas-Virginia Tube Reactor (CVTR) unit, just outside the site of the old town of Parr, SC. The CVTR was a 17 MWe, heavy water reactor. The plant is named after Virgil Clifton Summer, the former Chairman and CEO of SCE&G."V.C. Summer Nuclear Station"

SCANA SCANA Corporation was a regulated electric and natural gas public utility. The company was based in Cayce, South Carolina, a suburb of Columbia, South Carolina. Following the Nukegate scandal, the company's stock fell and the company was in disre ...

, retrieved 17 March 2011

Unit 1

V. C. Summer Unit 1 is a Westinghouse 3-loop Pressurized Water Reactor. The reactor first began commercial operation on January 1, 1984. The plant cost $1.3 billion to construct (equivalent to $ billion in )– 24 percent less per kilowatt than the average of 13 nuclear plants constructed over the same time period. Unit 1 generates 2900 MW_th (Thermal Megawatts) of heat, supplying a net output of 966 MW_e (Electric Megawatts) of electricity to the grid. In 2001, the Summer unit operated at 79.9 percent capacity, producing 6.76 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. In 2007 it produced 8.48 billion kilowatt-hours, increasing its

capacity factor The net capacity factor is the unitless ratio of actual electrical energy output over a given period of time to the theoretical maximum electrical energy output over that period. The theoretical maximum energy output of a given installation is def ...

to 100.2 percent. Two-thirds of the Summer plant is owned by its operator,

Dominion Energy Dominion Energy, Inc., commonly referred to as Dominion, is a North American power and energy company headquartered in Richmond, Virginia that supplies electricity in parts of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina and supplies natural gas ...

. The remaining one-third is owned by the South Carolina Public Service Authority (Santee Cooper).

Units 2 and 3

On March 27, 2008, South Carolina Electric & Gas applied to the

Nuclear Regulatory Commission The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy. Established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, the NRC began opera ...

(NRC) for a

Combined Construction and Operating License The Combined Construction and Operating License (Regulatory Guide 1.206, COL) replaced the previous Draft Regulatory Guide 1145 as the licensing process for new nuclear power plants in the United States. It is a part of a newer "streamlined" proce ...

(COL) to build two 1,100 MW

pressurized water reactors at the site. On May 27, 2008, SCE&G and Santee Cooper announced an

engineering, procurement and construction Engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contracts (a type of turnkey contract) are a form of contract used to undertake construction works by the private sector on large-scale and complex infrastructure projects. Overview Under an EPC c ...

(EPC) contract had been reached with Westinghouse. Costs were estimated to be approximately $9.8 billion for both AP1000 units, plus transmission facility and financing costs. The operators filed an application to increase customers bills by $1.2 billion (2.5%) during the construction period to partially finance capital costs. In March 2012, the NRC approved the construction license of the two proposed reactors at the Summer plant. As with the license approval for the Vogtle plant, NRC chairman

Gregory Jaczko Gregory B. Jaczko (; born October 29, 1970, Norristown, Pennsylvania) is a physicist who was chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from 2005 to 2012.

cast the lone dissenting vote, saying "I continue to believe that we should require that all Fukushima-related safety enhancements are implemented before these new reactors begin operating". The reactors were expected to go on-line in 2017 and 2018 respectively. The construction of Unit 2 began officially on March 9, 2013, with the pouring of concrete for the base mat. The placement of the first concrete was completed on March 11, 2013. Unit 2 was the first reactor to start construction in the US in 30 years. First concrete for Unit 3 was completed on November 4, 2013. In October 2014, a delay of at least one year and extra costs of $1.2 billion were announced, largely due to fabrication delays. Unit 2 was expected to be substantially complete in late 2018 or early 2019, with unit 3 about a year later. On July 23, 2015, V.C. Summer Unit 2 reached a milestone with the successful placement of the CA-01 module, one of the largest, heaviest, and most complicated modules within the Nuclear Island, also referred to as a super module because it was so large that huge submodules had to be shipped from the manufacturer and final assembly was completed on site in the twelve-story Module Assembly Building. Installation of CA-01 was long delayed due to both regulatory and production hurdles related to the module. It was the first of the US AP1000 reactors under construction to achieve placement of this critical module, beating Vogtle Unit 3 to this milestone, and allowing other construction activities in the Nuclear Island to progress that could not proceed until the module was in place. CA-01 is a large structural module that forms the internal structures of some compartments within the Containment Vessel, including the Steam Generator compartments, Reactor Vessel cavity, and Refueling Canal. The CA-01 Module is the heaviest module on site, weighing 1,200 tons, or 2.4 million pounds. Because of how much it weighs, lifting and placing the CA-01 module into the Unit 2 Nuclear Island resulted in the heaviest lift for the V.C. Summer construction project to date. In early 2017

Westinghouse Electric Company Westinghouse Electric Company LLC is an American nuclear power company formed in 1999 from the nuclear power division of the original Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It offers nuclear products and services to utilities internationally, includi ...

revised in-service dates to April 2020 and December 2020 for units 2 and 3. In March 2017, Westinghouse Electric Company filed for

Chapter 11 bankruptcy Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code ( Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, whe ...

because of $9 billion of losses from its two U.S. nuclear construction projects.

considered its options for the project, and ultimately decided to abandon the project in July 2017. SCANA had determined that completing just Unit 2 and abandoning Unit 3 could be feasible and was leaning toward that option internally, however the project died when minority partner Santee Cooper's board voted to cease all construction and SCANA could not find another partner to take their place. On July 31, 2017, after an extensive review into the costs of constructing Units 2 and 3, South Carolina Electric and Gas decided to stop construction of the reactors and later filed a Petition for Approval of Abandonment with the Public Service Commission of South Carolina.

Electricity Production

Surrounding population

The

defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of , concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, and an ingestion pathway zone of about , concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity. The 2010 U.S. population within of Summer was 17,599, an increase of 26.2 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 1,187,554, an increase of 14.3 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Columbia (30 miles to city center).

Seismic risk

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at Summer was 1 in 26,316, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.

Reactor data

The Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station consists of one operational reactor. Two additional units under construction were cancelled on July 31, 2017.

References

External links

* *
Final Safety Evaluation Report for Combined Licenses for Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Station, Units 2 and 3: Docket Nos. 52-027 and 52-028

Rising Costs and Delays Doom New Nuclear Reactors in South Carolina

Congressional Research Service The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a public policy research institute of the United States Congress. Operating within the Library of Congress, it works primarily and directly for members of Congress and their committees and staff on a ...

{{U.S. Nuclear Plants Energy infrastructure completed in 1984 Nuclear power stations using AP1000 reactors Buildings and structures in Fairfield County, South Carolina Nuclear power stations with reactors under construction Nuclear power plants in South Carolina Nuclear power stations using pressurized water reactors