Duke Energy Carolinas, a subsidiary of the US utility Duke Energy, is seeking approval from the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) to cancel the construction of the planned William States Lee III Nuclear Station (Gaffney, Cherokee County, South Carolina, US). The company has decided to terminate the project and believes it has become too risky and uncertain. The reasons behind this decision are the escalation of the expected construction costs and the bankruptcy of the reactor manufacturer Westinghouse Electric Co, which would have been in charge of the construction. Besides, other nuclear projects involving Westinghouse designed reactors such as South Carolina's VC Summer units and Southern Co.'s Vogtle Project encountered significant delays and cost overruns. Previously in August 2017, Santee Cooper and SCANA abandoned the VC Summer units construction project after estimating costs to continue were too high. In this regard, Duke Energy does not believe anymore in the William States Lee III project.
The 2,234 William States Lee III nuclear project was approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in December 2016. It consisted of two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors (1,000 MW net, 1,117 MW gross).
In the meanwhile, Duke Energy also asked the Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) for a 13.6% increase of the price paid by its North Carolina residential customers in order to recover the costs spent into the project, while commercial and industrial customers would see an average increase of 10.9%. This would increase the company's revenues by almost US$647m. If the proposal is approved by the NCUC, a residential customer who uses 1,000 kWh of power monthly would pay about US$122.68 per month, reflecting an increase of US$18.72 per month.
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