Special to the Chronicle
Debt-ridden Santee Cooper is $2 million poorer.
The taxpayer-owned utility agreed to pay that to bond investors it misled in its nuclear fiasco meltdown with SC Electric & Gas.
Santee Cooper will also pay up to $35,000 for the costs of handling the class action payments.
Santee Cooper sells power to Mid-Carolina Electric in Lexington County and other SC electric cooperatives.
Lexington County co-op member-owners pay higher electric rates as a result of the fiasco.
From 2014 to 2016, Santee Cooper sold mini-bonds to individual investors to raise money for the failed $9 billion twin nuclear reactor project.
The mini-bond sales would typically bring in $20 million to $25 million from investors, antee Cooper spokesperson Mollie Gore tolkd The State newspaper.
In 2019, the investors sued Santee Cooper for hiding from them major problems at the nuclear project.
“We’ve eliminated all nuclear litigation,” Santee Cooper CEO Mark Bonsall told his board. 
Who will be eligible for the settlement money has not yet been decided, Gore said.
Last year, Santee Cooper agreed to:
• Pay $200 million toward a $520 million settlement to resolve a ratepayers' lawsuit.
• Pay refunds to ratepayers for the nuclear fiasco. 
• Settle another lawsuit over how to split proceeds from nuclear equipment sales.
Santee Cooper has legally battled Westinghouse Electric, its contractor who has been blamed for the reactors' failures, over ownership pf the nuclar construction equipment..