New Brunswick’s nuclear generating station is once again producing electricity after being out of service for more than eight months.
The Point Lepreau nuclear generating station returned to operation on Thursday, NB Power said in a news release last week.
The facility was taken offline in early April for what officials said at the time was supposed to be a 100-day planned maintenance outage.
But a “critical issue” related to the main generator on the non-nuclear side was discovered when crews were bringing the station 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 utility said in a news release in October.
“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.”
Officials said they had to “safely and meticulously” disassemble part of the generator assembly, including the removal of the generator rotor, in order to access the stator bars — a process which involved support from national and international experts.
NB Power said it is still assessing the financial impact of the extended outage and is “actively exploring options to mitigate costs for customers,” including potential recovery through corporate insurance policies.
It typically costs the utility an average of $900,000 for each day that Point Lepreau is offline.
