A federal grand jury has indicted a second high-level Westinghouse nuclear officer in the $10-billion, 2017 collapse of the V.C. Summer nuclear construction project in South Carolina. Jeffrey Benjamin, former Westinghouse senior vice president for new plants and projects, is now among three other executives, two from the former SCANA Corp. owner of the project, facing criminal charges.
South Carolina’s The State newspaper reported that an 18-page, 16-count indictment, after a four-year federal investigation, charges multiple counts of fraud, including conspiracy, wire fraud, securities fraud, and causing a publicly-traded company to keep a false record.. In a press release, the Justice Department alleged that during 2016 and into 2017 when “Westinghouse had direct control over the construction and schedule of the project, Benjamin received information that the V.C. Summer units were materially behind schedule and over budget. Nevertheless, at various times from September 2016 through March 2017, the indictment alleges that Benjamin assured the owners that the units would be completed on schedule and took active steps to conceal from the owners damaging information about the project schedule. During this time period, the owners paid Westinghouse over $600,000,000 to construct the two V.C. Summer units, both of which were ultimately abandoned.”
Benjamin was responsible for Westinghouse’s global nuclear construction effort, which included the two 1,000-WP AP100 reactors in South Carolina and two similar units still under construction, and facing similar problems, in Georgia at the Southern Company’s Vogtle site. The Summer debacle led to the death of the parent company, SCANA Corp., which Virginia-based Dominion Energy gobbled up.
The other Westinghouse official and two key SCANA officials have agreed to plead guilty to various charges. They have not been sentenced. Carl Dean Churchman, the Westinghouse executive in charge of the Summer project, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in its investigation of the matter. The public indictment of Benjamin suggests he has not agreed to a plea bargain and will plead not guilty. If convicted, Benjamin could face a 20-year sentence and a fine of $5 million.
In a related matter at Georgia’s troubled Vogtle project, the Associate Press reported that the Georgia Public Service Commission this week blessed an agreement between the Atlanta-based Southern Co. and the PSC staff that the company will have to eat any construction costs above a $7.3 billion cap imposed in 2017 until the project is done. Under Georgia law, the company has been getting a return on its construction investments in the construction project, reviewed each six months.
The five commissioners, who have been strong supporters of the Vogtle project since the beginning, approved the agreement that states, “Since the company has exceeded the approved revised capital cost of $7.3 billion, it is no longer appropriate for the commission to verify and approve the dollars invested in the project.”
The projected cost to Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power for the two-unit project is over $12.5 billion, out of a total project cost of over $27 billion. Georgia Power is a minority owner of the plant, with the majority owned by the state’s public power systems and public power systems in Florida and Alabama, including the large Jacksonville Electric Authority.
–Kennedy Maize
(kenmaize@gmail.com)