Energy · United States

How much did Brunswick Nuclear Generating Station cost to build?

Brunswick Nuclear Generating Station is Duke Energy's two-reactor boiling-water nuclear plant near Southport in North Carolina, on a 1,200-acre site by the Cape Fear River. Although numbered Unit 2, the first reactor began commercial operation on 3 November 1975; Unit 1 followed on 18 March 1977. A 2010 U.S. Energy Information Administration profile reports the original two-unit construction cost as USD 2.490 billion expressed in 2007 purchasing-power dollars, using a Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer-price adjustment to the EIA's 1986 construction-cost data. That figure is not a bill paid in 2007 and is not a cost of later reactor power uprates. EIA recorded a combined 1,858 MW summer capacity in 2010; capacity numbers for other years or nameplate rating use a different basis. The existing reactor build-out was complete by 1977 and the plant continues to operate.