South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. (SCE&G) and Santee Cooper have narrowed down the sites for construction of a potential new plant to the Summer station and DOE's Savannah River Site (SRS), company officials told NRC staff this week.

SCE&G, which owns 66.7% of Summer, and Santee Cooper, which is South Carolina's state-owned electric utility and 33.3% owner of the plant, announced in August they were exploring the possibility of expanding their nuclear capacity (NW, 25 Aug., 12). The two companies have been in business together for more than 30 years, representatives told NRC staffers at a Dec. 6 meeting. SCE&G would be the operator of the new plant, as it is now for Summer, should they decide to build, the officials said.

The companies anticipate submitting a combined construction permit-operating license (COL) application to NRC possibly as early as third quarter 2007. Ron Clary, a project general manager for SCE&G, told the staff that a business case analysis completed this summer determined that additional baseload capacity will be needed in the service territory by 2015. The analysis concluded that nuclear was a favorable option from financial and environmental perspectives, Clary said.

One major decision is where a new plant would be sited. The companies envision a two-unit plant, with the first reactor starting operation in 2015 and a second unit coming on line at a later date. DOE has been open to having a commercial nuclear plant at the SRS, and SCE&G already operates a fossil-fired plant there that supplies electricity for activities at the complex, company officials said.

The companies sent out requests for proposals to vendors this fall and are in the process of evaluating four reactor technologies--Westinghouse's AP1000, Areva's Evolutionary Power Reactor, and General Electric's (GE) ESBWR and Advanced BWR (ABWR). Only the ABWR has received NRC's design certification, although the AP1000 is close to completing the process.

The status of a reactor's design certification is one of dozens of issues the companies are considering, Clary said. He said the evaluation also considers the size of the plant, electrical output, and ability to meet the 2015 startup date. The companies are looking at passive versus active reactor designs, comparing PWRs to BWRs, and are factoring in the costs of any new plant, Clary said. Summer is a 1,005-MW Westinghouse three-loop PWR. It
began operation in January 1984 and is the companies' only nuclear plant.

A decision on a site and reactor design is expected by year-end or in early 2006, companies officials said. The companies also expect to select a COL contractor in the same time frame.

Al Paglia, project supervisor of engineering and licensing for SCE&G, told the NRC staff that his company is evaluating whether it should become a member of the NuStart Energy consortium. NuStart has 11 members, including nine electric companies and two vendors, GE and Westinghouse. NuStart announced in September it would support two COL applications, one for the Tennessee Valley Authority's Bellefonte and the other for Entergy's Grand Gulf (NW, 29 Sept., 1).

SCE&G also has been working with the Nuclear Energy Institute on new plant activities and is a member of the newly created New Plant Oversight Committee, a group comprised primarily of future COL applicants.

In addition to meeting with the staff, SCE&G and Santee Cooper sent a letter to NRC laying out their COL plans. Like others in the industry, the South Carolina utilities want to keep NRC informed and work closely with the staff, since resources and time are tight to reach their goals for building new reactors in a decade.

Dave Matthews, director of NRC's new reactor licensing division, told the companies the NRC was establishing a disciplined system because of the expected demand for COL reviews and expected applications that were complete, of high quality and timely--a message he and other NRC senior officials have repeated to other utilities over the past few weeks. He also suggested that COL applicants that are not referencing an early site permit engage the NRC staff on pre-application environmental work. He said the staff could review such information ahead of the formal COL review, which would save some time later in the process.

--Jenny Weil, Washington