Duke Energy Corp. customers will be stuck with at least a $1 billion tab regardless of whether the company decides to fix its crippled Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida.

If Duke decides to close the plant, it will cost customers at least $1.6 billion to build another source of power and buy alternative energy. If the company decides the nuclear plant is worth repairing, customers will have to pay more than $1 billion in alternative power, even if they don't have to pay for the repair itself.

These details were revealed after an independent review of the different repair options became public Monday.

The review shows the building has serious structural problems that make repairing the plant even riskier and could double the cost.

The review was conducted by Zapata Inc., based in Charlotte, N.C.

Zapata estimates that in the best-case situation, it will cost $1.5 billion to fix the plant, and in the worst case, more than $3 billion (Greenwire, Oct. 2).

In the best-case estimate, Crystal River could be up and going by 2016, which is seven years after it shut down due to a failed maintenance and upgrade job. At that point, Duke would have forked out about $2 billion on expensive replacement power (Ivan Penn, Tampa Bay Times, Oct. 3). -- HP