NRC, U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS ISSUE FINAL ENVIRONMENTAL 

IMPACT STATEMENT FOR NEW REACTORS AT VIRGIL C. SUMMER SITE

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), 

Charleston District, have completed the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the 

Combined Licenses (COL) for the proposed Summer Units 2 and 3 reactors. The NRC concludes

in the FEIS that there are no environmental impacts that would preclude issuing the COLs for 

construction and operation of the proposed reactors at the site, near Jenkinsville, S.C. USACE 

will use the information in the FEIS in making its federal permit decision in accordance with the 

Clean Water Act and Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899.

The FEIS will be available on the NRC website at:

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1939/. The NRC staff, in 

cooperation with USACE, began its environmental review with a scoping process that included 

public meetings near the site in January 2009. The staff issued a draft EIS for the proposed COLs 

in April 2010 and held public meetings in May 2010 to gather comments on the draft EIS.

The FEIS, with the NRC’s conclusions, is also available via the NRC’s electronic 

document database, ADAMS, by entering accession numbers ML11098A044 and 

ML11098A057 in the ADAMS search engine at: http://wba.nrc.gov:8080/ves. In addition, the 

Fairfield County Library, at 300 Washington St. in Winnsboro, S.C., will have a hardbound copy 

of the FEIS available for public inspection.

The NRC’s publishing of the FEIS is only part of the overall Summer COL review. The 

agency staff continues to compile its final safety evaluation report (SER), which will include 

recommendations from the NRC’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, an independent

group of nuclear safety experts. The NRC’s final licensing decision will be based on the FEIS 

and SER findings, along with a ruling from the five-member Commission that heads the agency.

The applicants, South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G) and Santee Cooper, are 

applying for licenses to build and operate two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors adjacent to the 

existing Summer nuclear power plant, approximately 26 miles northwest of Columbia, S.C. The 

companies submitted the application March 27, 2008, and supplemented the application’s

environmental report to support their request on Feb. 13, 2009, and July 2, 2010. The AP1000 is 

a 1,100 MWe pressurized-water reactor design the NRC certified in 2006. The agency is 

NRC NEWS

U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200

Washington, D.C. 20555-0001

E-mail: opa.resource@nrc.gov Site: www.nrc.gov

Blog: http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov

No. 11-067 April 19, 2011
currently reviewing Westinghouse’s May 2007 application to amend the certified design. More 

information regarding the review is available on the NRC’s website at:

http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/design-cert/amended-ap1000.html.

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