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Small modular reactors – touted as the key to the U.S.’s burgeoning nuclear energy renaissance – are being considered by all three major utilities that serve South Carolina.

There are no concrete plans at present to build smaller modified nuclear reactors, or SMRs, in the Palmetto State, but that doesn’t mean officials aren’t looking closely at the technology. 

“As the fastest growing state in the country, South Carolina must have new energy resources to support our growing economy,” said Rhonda O’Banion, spokeswoman for Dominion Energy in South Carolina. “… Dominion Energy South Carolina considers small modular reactors as a feasible option starting in 2040 or possibly sooner.”

Added Duke Power spokesman Ryan Mosier, “There is not currently a specific site for new advanced nuclear (reactors) under consideration in South Carolina but that could change in coming years as we begin implementing resource plans approved by regulators.” 

Both Dominion, which serves the Midlands, and Duke Power, which serves the Upstate and Pee Dee, are in the process of moving forward on SMRs in other states. Santee Cooper, the state-owned public power utility, is contemplating modified nuclear reactors, as well.

Dominion Energy announced in October that it had partnered with tech giant Amazon to consider development and financing of an SMR in Virginia, Dominion’s home state. Charlotte-based Duke Power said last year that it plans to build two small modular reactors in North Carolina.

Santee Cooper is moving more slowly. It believes that given the current state of technology, small modular reactors won’t be commercially viable until January 2040, according to the company’s 2023 Integrated Resource Plan.

While there are no definite plans at present to construct small modular reactors in South Carolina, it’s something that will happen, according to James Little, co-chair of the Southeast Nuclear Advisory Council and a member of the S.C. Governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council.

“There’s no question that within five years, SMRs will be moving forward in South Carolina,” Little said. “Nuclear is very strong, and it’s an important factor, particularly in South Carolina. Its importance is only going to increase.”

Utilities serving South Carolina are in the evaluation stage regarding small modular reactors, said Travis Knight, head of the University of South Carolina’s nuclear engineering graduate program.

“I don’t know of any specific plans in terms of site selection and construction, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t being considered,” he said.

As the Southeast, including South Carolina, works to attract the high-paying jobs associated with significant tech operations, which can be very electricity-intensive, the deployment of small modular reactors is seen as vital.

“South Carolina wants to continue elevating its economy, and it’s trying to bring in more and more higher technology jobs,” Little said. “The addition of SMRs would enable it to do that.”

On a larger scale, nuclear power is increasingly being eyed to meet future energy needs because it’s clean, reliable, and has a small footprint. Many who see climate change as a key issue recognize that nuclear power represents a way to generate electricity with no carbon output. 

“Small modular reactors promise to deliver lower-cost, reliable electricity with reduced risk of price fluctuations and enhanced resilience which is needed for growth for consumers as well as business,” Knight said. 

Business interests across the state say it’s critical to secure South Carolina’s energy future.

The 2025 House GOP Caucus agenda supports increasing electric generation capacity in an affordable and reliable manner to meet growth demands while protecting agricultural lands and outdoor spaces.

State Sen. Ross Turner, R-Greenville County, told a Greenville Chamber breakfast meeting in December that energy going forward “is going to be a huge thing with all these people coming to the state.”

One estimate, Turner said, is that South Carolina will have to grow the power grid 30-fold by the year 2050.  “Nuclear is still going to be an answer for that in the future,” he said.   

South Carolina and nuclear power

South Carolina has a long history with nuclear.

The state was marked for a key role in nuclear development with the construction of the Savannah River Site in the 1950s in Aiken, Allendale, and Barnwell counties. It was constructed during the Cold War to produce materials used in the fabrication of nuclear weapons, including tritium and plutonium. 

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Savannah River’s focus moved to environmental cleanup, nuclear materials management, and research and development activities.

Civilian development of nuclear power in the state began with the opening of H.B. Robinson Nuclear Plant, the Southeast’s first commercial nuclear power reactor, in 1971. At present, South Carolina has seven active nuclear reactors, all of which were opened in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Duke runs six reactors in the state: three at its Oconee Nuclear Station in Seneca, two at its Catawba Nuclear Station in York County, and H.B. Robinson. It operates five nuclear reactors in North Carolina, as well.

Dominion’s lone Palmetto State reactor is the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in Fairfield County, which it owns with Santee Cooper. Dominion runs six other nuclear reactors, spread between Connecticut and Virginia. 

South Carolinians’ perception of nuclear power suffered in 2017, when Santee Cooper and S.C. Electric & Gas, a subsidiary of publicly traded SCANA Corp., pulled the plug on an expansion project at V.C. Summer. 

Work to build two new reactors was stopped midway due to construction delays, cost overruns, and the bankruptcy of the main contractor Westinghouse Electric Co. This came after $9 billion had been spent.

Public outrage followed, along with prosecution of two SCANA and two Westinghouse executives, the sale of SCANA to Dominion Energy, calls to reform Santee Cooper, and utility customers having to foot a substantial part of the massive bill. The V.C. Summer expansion site remains essentially unchanged seven years later, although there has been recent talk about restarting the project.

Not long after work at V.C. Summer was terminated, Duke Power announced it would not proceed with two nuclear projects, including one planned for Gaffney.

Despite those difficulties, nuclear remains a popular energy source in the Southeast, particularly in the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia, which generates approximately 37 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants.

The modular reactors being considered now differ from traditional reactors at sites such V.C. Summer and H.R. Robinson in that they are significantly smaller.

SMRs typically have a power output capacity of between 70 and 300 megawatts. That’s less than traditional nuclear reactors, which have production that begins at around 650 megawatts. V.C. Summer, for example, has a net capacity of approximately 971 megawatts.

Full-sized reactors typically generate enough energy to power all homes in a city of approximately 750,000. SMRs are suited to powering small- to medium-sized cities or large commercial operations, but their scalability means more SMRs can be added should demand increase.

SMRs are less expensive and easier to construct than their larger counterparts.

“The SMRs are assembled at a manufacturing site and then trucked to locations,” Little said. “The older-style reactor plants were different in that while the plants were standard, the installation was different at each site, which drove up costs and project time.”

Also, small modular reactors can be sited at existing or shuttered coal and gas-fueled plants, where they would be able to use existing transmission lines to reach consumers and businesses.

SMRs are expected to cost approximately $1 billion apiece and require about half the time of a conventional nuke plant to construct. Of course, the first small modular reactors to move forward will likely cost more and take longer, as happens with new technology.

Nuclear renaissance

Nuclear power’s revival in the U.S. is fueled by several factors: increased demand for energy, including electricity-hungry sectors such as artificial intelligence; a push to decarbonize which requires a transition away from fossil fuels; and a desire for increased energy independence.

The technology behind smaller modular reactors has been around for decades – they are found, for example, in Navy ships and atomic submarines – but only two commercial SMRs have been brought online: one in Russia and one in China. 

SMRs are viewed as a key component for future nuclear development for reasons beyond cost and convenience. They can be brought online more quickly than traditional nuclear power plants, and smaller reactors feature less-complicated designs and have less fuel requirements than traditional reactors, reducing the amount of transportation needed and time spent handling nuclear fuel.  

Just as with any developing technology, a move to SMR won’t be without hiccups.

The first commercial SMR scheduled to begin operating in the United States, a venture between nuclear developer NuScale and a state agency in Utah called the Carbon Free Power Project, was scuttled late last year in part due to spiraling costs. 

Despite the relative novelty of commercial SMRs and the misstep in Utah, there is a lot of buzz in the energy world about modular reactors and nuclear power, in part because tech companies have bought into nuclear. 

Besides Amazon’s agreement with Dominion to look at erecting an SMR in Virginia, other companies are embracing the new technology:

·        Google signed an agreement with Kairos Power in October to develop multiple small modular reactors in a bid to harness the additional power that artificial intelligence technology will require in the years ahead; 

·        Microsoft and Constellation Energy inked a deal in September to reopen a unit of Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, closed five years ago, to provide energy to the tech firm’s data centers; 

·        Oracle is designing a data center that would be powered by three small modular nuclear reactors, chairman and co-founder Larry Ellison said in September; and

·        Amazon is also pumping some $500 million into Maryland-based X-Energy Reactor Co., a nuclear reactor and fuel design company, and will purchase power produced by X-Energy-designed reactors.

“(The) moves are part of a larger green trend that has arisen as tech companies deal with the escalating energy requirements of the data centers and number-crunching farms that support artificial intelligence,” Nature magazine wrote in October.

Electricity needed for data centers, artificial intelligence, and cryptocurrency is anticipated to grow to 1,000 terawatt hours worldwide by 2026, up from 460 terawatt hours just two years ago, according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency. To put that into context, 1,000 terawatt hours is roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of Japan, added the agency, which works with countries to shape energy policy.

There has been a push in recent years to swap fossil-fueled power plants running on coal and natural gas for clean, renewable sources such as wind, solar, and biomass. Some of the emphasis on renewable energy is the result of government policies that seek to drive consumers from carbon-emitting vehicles and home-heating sources to electric vehicles and electric home heating. 

This includes President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14057, signed in 2021, which mandates that government achieve net-zero emissions across federal operations by 2050.

But renewables are unlikely to fulfill power requirements given their intermittent nature.

“More and more climate advocates now recognize that renewables alone can’t deliver the zero-carbon power grid they desire,” the Manhattan Institute wrote earlier this year. “Since wind and solar produce power only about one-third of the time, they require massive amounts of ‘dispatchable generation’ – power that can be produced whenever it’s needed – as backup.” 

In 2022, natural gas was the largest source of power in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection. Some 39.8 percent of electricity production came from gas, followed by coal (19.7 percent), and nuclear (18.2 percent). Trailing was renewable energy sources such as wind (10.2 percent), hydro (5.9 percent), solar (3.4 percent), and biomass (1.2 percent), according to EPA figures. 

Many utilities recognize that nuclear provides a steady source of carbon-free power around the clock, something renewables can’t do.

“Nuclear is a reliable, carbon-free energy source that operates practically every hour of every day, potentially making SMRs a smart complement to renewable energy sources which are subject to weather-related intermittency,” said Dominion’s O’Banion.

Looking forward

Erecting small modular reactors in South Carolina may not be in Duke Power’s immediate future, but the Charlotte-based utility has announced plans for two SMRs in North Carolina: one in Stokes County, north of Winston-Salem, and another at an as-yet undetermined location. 

Because SMRs are new technology, it’s expected to take at least a decade to bring the plants online. Duke doesn’t expect to have its Stokes County reactor operating until 2035.

Dominion announced Oct. 16 that subsidiary Dominion Energy Virginia and Amazon had entered into a memorandum of understanding to “explore innovative new development structures that would help advance potential Small Modular Reactor (SMR) nuclear development in Virginia.”

In July, Dominion Energy put out a request for proposals from nuclear technology companies to evaluate the feasibility of developing a small modular reactor at the company's North Anna Power Station in Louisa County, Virginia.

The agreement “documents the companies’ efforts to jointly explore innovative ways to advance SMR development and financing while also mitigating potential cost and development risks for customers and capital providers,” Dominion stated in a press release.

Even with the advent of small modular reactors, detractors continue to see nuclear as too risky, in part because of a small number of high-profile mishaps – Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island in 1979, Ukraine’s Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986, and Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011.

Many critics consider nuclear power dangerous, unsustainable, and a distraction from focusing on the move to renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. In addition, the question of what to do with spent nuclear fuel rods remains. 

“The costs to build these plants run into the billions, which is far greater than the costs of renewable energy. It can take over 10 years to build these facilities without any climate benefit during that time,” the South Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club states on its website. “Worse yet, the resulting facilities are a major threat to our environment and our safety.” 

But as energy demand continues to increase in South Carolina and across the nation, it’s not only impossible to switch entirely to “environmentally friendly” energy sources, it’s not even certain such a move would be good for the environment. As the Heritage Foundation has reported, it's not as if wind, solar, and battery technologies will magically appear. 

“Companies still have to mine the resources, manufacture the product, and deal with the waste streams,” the think tank stated. “There are challenges to disposing potentially toxic lithium-ion batteries and solar panels, or even wind turbine blades that are difficult and expensive to transport and crush at landfills.”

Other advantages nuclear power offers include the ability to amortize capital investments over 40, 60, or even 80 years, which allows for cost recovery over a longer period, the opportunity for more gradual capacity additions, and financing in smaller, more manageable increments, Knight said. 

“Unlike natural gas, where a large share of the cost is tied to fuel which is sourced from outside South Carolina, nuclear power’s costs are weighted toward operations and maintenance,” he added. “This provides well-paying, stable jobs within the community.”