Canadian nuclear plant rehab goes awry
Posted by Big Gav in canada, nuclear power
The Global Post has an article on problems refurbishing a Canadian nuclear plant - Canadian nuclear plant rehab goes awry.
The guardhouses stand at the end of a tree-lined road in this rural, forested province, and their occupants aren’t welcoming visitors.
Beyond the gates, an effort to refurbish Atlantic Canada’s only nuclear power plant isn’t going well. The 25-year-old reactor at Point Lepreau was supposed to be refreshed, refitted and running full-tilt last September after a $1 billion repair. Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the crown corporation that built the reactor, was to have demonstrated the efficacy of refurbishing nuclear reactors that would otherwise have to be retired.
Today, nobody knows when the plant will be back online, except that it won’t be any earlier than 2011. The company's engineers are currently trying to figure out how to restore seals on critical components inside the reactor vessel of the provincially owned plant, 40 miles east of Lubec, Maine. CEO Hugh MacDiarmid has admitted that they had “overly optimistic scheduling assumptions” and “inadequate planning and preparation” at Lepreau.
The fallout has been considerable for New Brunswick, Atomic Energy of Canada and the Canadian nuclear industry generally, raising concerns about the wisdom of refurbishing the Candu-6 reactors, which have been installed at plants in Argentina, Romania and South Korea. Candu-6 units are also being refitted at a plant in Ontario, and are being contemplated at another in Quebec.
Many existing reactors worldwide are near the end of their lifetimes and need extensive rehabilitation to continue operating. The refit at Point Lepreau was supposed to be a shining model of what Atomic Energy of Canada could do for its old plants.
“AECL is terribly behind, terribly over budget, and terribly cash-flow negative on their refurbishment projects,” said Toronto-based energy consultant Tom Adams. “The federal government keeps writing big checks for AECL and they’re not happy about it.”
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