COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina's state-owned utility is looking to a private company to revive a project to build two nuclear power plants that was abandoned eight years ago , losing more than $9 billion without generating a watt of power.

Santee Cooper's board agreed Friday to start six weeks of negotiations with Brookfield Asset Management that they hope will lead to a deal that lets the private company build the nuclear plants at the V.C. Summer site near Jenkinsville at their own risk to generate power that they could mostly sell to whom they want, such as energy-gobbling data centers.

Santee Cooper said Brookfield preliminarily agreed to provide the utility with some of the power generated. But that and probably thousands of other details will have to be negotiated. In a twi

See Full Page