Martin Mittelstaedt
Globe and Mail
August 2, 2002

Bruce Power says it will restart a reactor at the mothballed Bruce A nuclear generating station as early as next April, ending a five-year shutdown caused by safety problems and poor operating performance.

But the reopening will likely draw renewed attention to safety concerns at the plant, where construction began in 1970. The plant is considered relatively old by nuclear-industry standards.

An antinuclear activist accused Bruce Power of cutting corners by proposing to reopen the plant without installing new pressure tubes that would improve safety margins.

"An advanced early restart raises the whole spectre that we feared the most – that profit is going to be put before safety and that they are going to push safety to the limit in order to get production out of these old reactors," said Dave Martin, nuclear adviser to the Sierra Club of Canada.

The company also intends to reopen a second idle reactor at the sprawling nuclear complex on the shores of Lake Huron before next summer.

The startup of the two reactors will cost $400-million and will add 1,500 megawatts, enough electricity to supply about 500,000 households, to the provincial grid.

Bruce Power, a branch of British Energy, the largest electricity producer in Britain, said it was able to set a timetable for the restart after federal nuclear regulators fixed dates for licensing hearings into the proposed reopening.

Chief executive officer Duncan Hawthorne said output from the station will reduce Ontario’s reliance on expensive electricity imports and will help prevent power shortages during peak summer months, when demand for air conditioning is highest.

Yesterday, the government agency operating the province’s electricity market once again called on consumers to voluntarily curb power use in order to help avoid brownouts and blackouts.

"If you look at it right now, you can see there is a pretty chronic shortage. You’re importing into Ontario more or less every day now," Mr. Hawthorne said.

Mr. Hawthorne discounted worries about the pressure tubes and said the company has inspected them and believes one reactor can be safely operated for another eight years and the second for 13 years before retubing will be required.

Before the station was shut, its pressure tubes were also viewed as vulnerable to sagging that engineers speculated might lead to blisters and dangerous cracks. Mr. Hawthorne said the company is installing new equipment to forestall the problem.

Because it is not retubing, Bruce Power will be able to reopen its reactors at a far lower cost than at Pickering A, where Ontario Power is restarting a similarly mothballed station for $2-billion.

Based on this expenditure, Ontario Power is paying about 3.5 times more than Bruce Power for each megawatt of generating capacity it is bringing back.