NB Power says the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating station could be offline for several weeks.
Nearly seven months ago, the province’s major utility took the facility offline for a 100-day planned maintenance outage.
However, in a release, the company said during the start-up protocol, “a critical issue was identified with the main generator which is located on the non-nuclear side of the station—an area that was not worked on during the outage.”
In the release, it explained that the issue had to be fixed before it can be brought back online.
“Once the initial issue was discovered with a stator bar within the generator, NB Power conducted extensive testing on all stator bars and identified that five others were showing signs of degradation,” the release said. “An independent investigation has determined that the cause of this issue is a manufacturer’s defect that occurred during the maintenance of the generator in 2010.”
NB Power said it decided to repair all six before bringing the station back online, and those repairs, according to the utility, have been completed.
“This involves several verification steps and thorough testing to ensure that all components are precisely aligned and secured,” it said in the release.
It said the plan is to return the nuclear generating station to service in December. The timeline, though, will be determined by how the start-up activities progress.
The release said it is unknown how much this could continued outage cost taxpayers, but it has been reported that keeping Lepreau offline costs an average $900,000 per day.
“We are examining every option to reduce costs for New Brunswick customers, including exploring if these costs can be recovered through our corporate insurance policies,” the release said.
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