The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said Wednesday that its staff had completed its Final Safety Evaluation Report for Combined Licenses for two proposed nuclear reactors at the proposed William States Lee III site near Gaffney in Cherkokee County, S.C., concluding there were no safety concerns that would get in the way of a construction and operating license for the project.
The NRC staff will provide this report and the Final Environmental Impact Statement on the application for the Duke Energy proposal to the Commission for the mandatory hearing phase of the licensing process. That hearing is expected to be completed sometime this year, the NRC said.
Duke Energy officially proposed a two-reactor project with an application tendered in December 2007. Estimates for construction costs of two Westinghouse designed Advanced Passive 1000 reactors have ranged from $5 billion to $14 billion with costs escalating as the project schedule meets with delays. Duke said in July 2013, when a delay in the site safety evaluation was announced, that it would maintain a target completion date for the new power plant proposal for sometime in the 2020s. However, a final decision on whether or not the company would proceed with the project was not announced.
The NRC said that following the mandatory hearing, the Commission would vote on whether or not to authorize its staff to issue the licenses for the reactors.
The design for the amended 1,100-megawatt AP1000 design was certified by the NRC in 2012. In 2013, delays in the application where prompted by budgetary restraints at the NRC, by a decision to move the nuclear islands and by changes in safety standards prompted by the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan.