Former Westinghouse executive to be sentenced Tuesday in SCANA nuclear scandal
A former top Westinghouse executive who oversaw construction on SCANA’s doomed $10 billion nuclear project in Fairfield County will be sentenced Tuesday in federal court for lying to a federal agent who was investigating why the project failed.
Carl Churchman, 72, will appear at 10 a.m. at the Columbia federal courthouse before U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis, who will issue the sentence.
He faces up to five years in federal prison. But because he pleaded guilty in June 2021 and agreed to become a government witness against others involved in the scandal, Churchman’s sentence will likely be less than five years.
His lawyer, Lauren Williams of Charleston, is asking for a non-prison sentence, according to documents filed on the federal court public records database.
Despite his guilty plea, Churchman is highly respected in the nuclear industry and will be able to be employed, Williams wrote to Lewis.
“Allowing Mr. Churchman to immediately return to gainful employment in the nuclear industry benefits not only Mr. Churchman, but the community at large, as Mr. Churchman brings with him decades of nuclear safety knowledge and expertise that is sorely lacking in many current nuclear projects,” Williams wrote. “Because of his attitude and work ethic, Mr. Churchman’s reputation in the nuclear industry was simply stellar.”
Like two top SCANA officials who have pleaded guilty in the case and already been sentenced to prison, Churchman was involved in a cover-up to keep secret from regulators and thousands of investors the looming business failure at the V.C. Summer nuclear site, according to evidence in the case. The scandal broke after SCANA pulled the plug on construction of two reactors at the Fairfield County site.
At first, the July 2017 failure of the nuclear project was attributed to cost overruns and mismanagement, but an FBI investigation established that there was a criminal conspiracy to hide major problems at the site from the public and thousands of investors who owned SCANA stock.
The company’s shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange and were highly regarded. Plus, hundreds of thousands of customers — who under an arrangement approved by the S.C. General Assembly were billed monthly for ongoing construction costs as the project went along — ended up paying billions for a failed project.
Had news of the woeful lack of progress on the nuclear reactors leaked out, SCANA’s stock price might have tumbled, along with the hefty dividends the shares were known for.
Westinghouse was involved because SCANA had hired the company, known for building nuclear plants, to oversee construction at the site.
Westinghouse hired Churchman in 2015 to be the onsite nuclear project manager. At that time, “the project was long behind schedule and ... was already sliding into failure. Despite the absolute mess he walked into, Mr. Churchman put the full force of his knowledge and work ethic towards trying to right the ship, impressing both his Westinghouse colleagues and the contractors on the project,” Churchman’s lawyer wrote.
A federal investigation established that Churchman lied to an FBI agent about aspects of his relationship with SCANA officials. Specifically, Churchman told the agent he was not involved in communicating how the project was going to SCANA officials, according to evidence in the case. An email chain easily disproved Churchman’s assertions, according to evidence.
Up until news of nuclear project’s failure became public in August 2017, SCANA, which provided power to much of South Carolina, was a Fortune 500 firm and one of the state’s most successful companies.
SCANA’s decision to abandon the project turned out to be one of the state’s biggest business fiascos ever. It not only threw some 4,000 construction workers out of their jobs, it led to the collapse of SCANA and its absorption into Dominion Energy, a major Virginia-based publicly traded utility.
The two former SCANA executives sentenced to prison are:
▪ Kevin Marsh, former SCANA CEO, was sentenced to two years in prison in October 2021 for his role in the cover-up. He also forfeited $5 million to the government. He has been released.
▪ Stephen Byrne, a former SCANA top executive, in March was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison, hit with a $200,000 fine and ordered to pay $1 million in restitution.
In asking for mercy, Churchman’s lawyer wrote, “The spectacular fall of the V.C. Summer project and the resulting case against Mr. Churchman have rendered him almost unemployable in the industry to which he has devoted the last 50-plus years.
“However, those in the industry who have worked with Mr. Churchman or know him personally are eager to draw him into future projects once his sentencing is complete, as his historical and vast nuclear knowledge are without peer in today’s nuclear industry.”
In asking for a non-prison sentence, Churchman’s attorney also filed information under seal that contains “intimate information” about “Mr. Churchman’s life, health, personal history, the decisions that have led him to his current predicament and the steps he has taken to rectify his situation.”
In August, Judge Lewis threw out criminal charges against a fourth defendant in the SCANA scandal, former Westinghouse executive Jeffrey Benjamin. Federal prosecutors have indicated they will seek to re-indict Benjamin, who was accused of helping former SCANA officials hide major workplace problems from 2015 to 2017 at the nuclear site.
