UPDATE 1-Duke shuts SC Catawba 1 reactor for refuel

NEW YORK, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Duke Energy Corp shut the 1,129-megawatt Unit 1 at the Catawba nuclear power station in South Carolina on Nov. 6 for planned refueling and maintenance, a spokeswoman for the plant said Monday. She could not say when the unit would return to service due to competitive reasons. She did say during this outage workers would upgrades the unit's analog cards to digital cards. Electricity traders guessed the unit would return in about a month. The unit last shut for refueling from about May 5 to June 23, 2008. It is on an 18-month refueling cycle. The 2,258-MW Catawba station is located in Lake Wylie in York County about 20 miles southwest of Charlotte, North Carolina. There are two 1,129-MW Units 1 and 2 at the station, which entered service in 1985 and 1986. The NRC renewed the units' original 40-year operating license in 2003 for another 20 years until 2043. Unit 2 dipped to 99 percent by early Monday from full power early Friday. One MW powers about 700 homes in the Carolinas. Duke operates the Catawba station for its owners. North Carolina Electric Membership Corp (61.5 percent) and Duke (38.5 percent) own Unit 1. North Carolina Municipal (75 percent) and Piedmont Municipal Power (25 percent) own Unit 2. In 2007, Duke filed with the NRC to build two of Toshiba Corp/Shaw Group Inc's Westinghouse Electric Co 1,100 MW AP1000 reactors at the proposed William States Lee III nuclear power station in Cherokee County, South Carolina, which is near the company's McGuire and Catawba nuclear plants. The NRC planned to decide on the combined construction and operating license in 2011. Using an industry estimate of $4,000 per kilowatt, the new reactors would cost about $4.4 billion each. Duke, of Charlotte, North Carolina, owns and operates about 39,000 MW of generating capacity in North America and Latin America, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes electricity to about 4 million U.S.

customers in the Carolinas and the Midwest. (Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) (([e-mail]; [phone]; Reuters Messaging: [e-mail])) Keywords: UTILITIES OPERATIONS/DUKE CATAWBA (For help: Click "Contact Us" in your desk top, click here or call 1-800-738-8377 for Reuters Products and [phone] for Thomson products; For client training: [e-mail]; [phone]) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved.

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