Reuters News Service
Planet Ark
August 5, 2002

NEW YORK — Bruce Power said it expects to restart two 750 megawatt units at its Bruce A nuclear power station in time to meet next summer’s peak electricity demand, several months ahead of its earlier schedule. Company officials said the earlier restart was due to an accelerated hearing schedule with Canadian energy regulators.

"We understand our case will have to be made at the hearings to justify our restart . . . (but we have) high confidence for a successful outcome," Bruce Power Chief Executive Duncan Hawthorne said in a statement this week.

With the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission hearing expected next February, Bruce Power said Bruce A unit 4 could start supplying energy as early as April of 2003, well ahead of its summer 2003 objective. Hawthorne also said unit 3 could be in service before next summer, further helping Ontario meet its power needs during the peak summer months. Electricity demand typically peaks during the summer, when air conditioning accounts for about a third of all power used.

Ontario residents consumed an all-time record 25,342 MW of power on Thursday, while the Ontario grid imported some 3,000 MW from its neighbors in Manitoba and Quebec in Canada and New York, Michigan and Minnesota in the United States. When both units return, Bruce Power will be able to provide another 1,500 MW of electricity to the Ontario market the Bruce A station will provide Ontario with another 1,500 MW, enough to power about 1.5 million homes.

Bruce A unit 4 was taken out of service in Dec. 1997 and unit 3 in May 1998. All four units of Bruce A were shut by the former Ontario Hydro, the owner and operator at the time. There are no plans to restart units 1 or 2.

Bruce Power estimated the cost to restore the Bruce A units at C$400 million, which is above the company’s initial C$340 million estimate due, in part, to security enhancements made after the Sept. 11 attacks.

To date, Bruce Power has spent about C$195 million on the restart. Since the province’s electricity market opened to competition three months ago, Bruce Power said its four operating reactors at the Bruce B have worked at a capacity factor of nearly 100 percent. Bruce Power is a partnership among British Energy Plc, the UK’s largest electricity generator, Canada’s Cameco Corp. (15 percent), the largest uranium fuel supplier in the world, and the two main unions at the Bruce site, the Power Workers’ Union (up to 4 percent) and the Society of Energy Professionals (up to 1.2 percent).