Point Lepreau shutdown extended for additional repairs

An unscheduled shutdown of the Point Lepreau nuclear generating station that was supposed to last two weeks has been extended to 25 days, according to NB Power. 

The extension guarantees Lepreau will not be able to meet its production targets for the 2015/2016 fiscal year — making it the fourth year in a row that has happened.

The utility says a problem unrelated to a refuelling issue that caused the shut down is taking extra time to fix. 

"Repairs have been made to the fuelling machine which originally caused the outage," it said in a statement on Wednesday. 

"Additional work to the heat transport system has emerged that is most effectively completed while off-line. This work is underway and should be completed by the end of week."

Lepreau's heat transport system has been quietly causing concern at the plant for several months. Two of four giant 9,000 horsepower pumps that move heat from the reactor to boilers where it's used to create steam and generate electricity developed problems with internal seals late last fall.   

The problem was not considered serious enough to force a mid-winter shutdown of the plant, but when the station's refuelling machine jammed in March, a decision was made to fix both problems. It's the heat pump repairs that have taken longer than expected.

Lepreau has run into a series of issues since coming back online in late November of 2012 and has missed production targets each year since.

In the last two fiscal years, it was budgeted to produce at a combined 87.5 per cent capacity, but ran closer to 78 per cent instead. The utility has said each one per cent loss in production costs it $4 million per year.

This year, for the first time since the refurbishment concluded, the utility had hoped to operate Lepreau trouble free and budgeted for it to run at 97 per cent capacity.

But the current shut down, which will have the plant sitting idle for the first 12 days of the year, has already put that target out of reach.