Two of the state's biggest utilities are considering a plan to build a nuclear power plant together, although both companies are suing the federal government for failing to dispose of their existing nuclear waste.

Santee Cooper, the state-owned utility based in Moncks Corner, and Scana Corp., the Columbia-based company that owns South Carolina Electric & Gas, announced a plan Wednesday to study the feasibility of building a nuclear plant together. The utilities have joint ownership of one of the state's four nuclear plants, the V.C. Summer facility that opened in 1983.

"It just makes natural business sense," said Santee Cooper spokeswoman Laura Varn. "We're both looking at our next generation of capacity, we're both interested in nuclear and we've done it together before."

Scana opened a natural-gas power plant last year and said it will need to increase its generating capacity by 2015. Santee Cooper plans to fire up two new coal-burning units by 2010, but because of surging real estate development around Myrtle Beach, it said it will need a new power source around 2013.

"We are both in the fortunate position not to have to rush anything," said Scana spokesman Robin Montgomery.

Utilities often share ownership of nuclear plants with groups of customers, but more power companies are pairing up with other utilities in building and operating big facilities, according to Trish Conrad, a spokeswoman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an electric-industry trade and advocacy group. "It's an opportunity for them to share both the expense and the risk of these enterprises," Conrad said.

In addition to nuclear, Santee Cooper and Scana are considering plants that burn fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. But with costs for those fuels skyrocketing, nuclear power is hot in the utility industry these days. It's relatively cheap, dependable and does not emit much in the way of air pollutants.

Because of a few accidents and more strict federal regulations, most utilities have not pursued nuclear development in at least 20 years. The last U.S. nuclear plant to win a federal OK cranked up in 1996.

But the Bush administration has encouraged utilities to pursue nuclear power. A sweeping energy bill signed into law this month provides financial incentives for new nuclear plants and includes provisions protecting them from lawsuits.

Three consortiums of utilities have formed recently, pooling their resources in efforts to win federal approval for new plants. State Commerce Department officials met with one of those coalitions, dubbed NuStart Energy Development, in May, urging them to consider South Carolina as a possible site. NuStart has garnered about $260 million dollars from the government to cover about half of the cost of winning the licenses to build and run a nuclear plant.

The one major downside of nuclear power is the difficulty of handling and storing radioactive waste. In 1983, the government signed an agreement with most U.S. nuclear utilities to take delivery of the toxic waste in 1998. It had planned to store the hazardous material in a Nevada mountain, but that project has been tied up in lawsuits and political wrangling. Most of the country's spent nuclear fuel is now sitting next to the reactors it came from.

As the Bush administration pushed for new nuclear plants in recent months, the federal Department of Energy has fought some 63 lawsuits from U.S. utilities that have set aside $26 billion over the years to pay the government to pick up their radioactive waste.

Santee Cooper and Scana are both scheduled to prosecute their cases against the government in January.

About 20 percent of U.S. electricity comes from the country's 103 nuclear reactors. About 16 percent of the world's power is nuclear-derived. Some European countries, such as France and Lithuania, get close to 80 percent of their power from nuclear plants. Countries like Canada and Mexico have been more cautious. About 13 percent of Canadian power is nuclear, while in Mexico that number falls to 5 percent.