Lepreau nuclear plant back in service after second-longest outage in 40 years

The Point Lepreau nuclear generating station is back online producing electricity for N.B. Power. But the cost to customers of an eight-month shutdown that began in early April and ended last week is still being calculated by the utility.

"N.B. Power continues to assess the financial impact of the extended outage," Dominique Couture, a spokesperson for the utility, wrote by email in response to questions about the cost of the shutdown and how it will paid for.

What began as a 98-day planned and budgeted maintenance shutdown on April 6 ballooned into a 248-day outage, after an unexpected problem surfaced in the station's generator.  

That added 21 extra weeks of downtime, the second-longest service interruption caused by equipment problems at the plant in its 41-year history.

In 1995, the nuclear plant was offline for almost nine months to address sagging pressure tubes in its reactor.

Couture said N.B. Power is hoping costs caused by the generator trouble, whatever they amount to, won't have to be fully paid by customers and the company is "exploring options" like "potential recovery through corporate insurance policies" as an alternative.

Breakdowns at Lepreau are notoriously expensive.   

Depending on the time of year and market prices to supply replacement energy, the cost of an unscheduled outage can range between $1 million and $4 million per day.

Since last year, those amounts are charged directly to customers on their bills as a "variance account recovery" rather than being absorbed as a financial loss by the utility.

Currently, N.B. Power customers are paying a three per cent surcharge on every monthly bill to pay for previously accumulated financial misfortunes, including another major breakdown at Lepreau that occurred in December 2022.

That lasted 35 days and added more than $100 million to the variance account set up for customers to pay off.

If insurance does not cover the recent Lepreau breakdown costs, those will be added to the variance account. N.B. Power customers will not have to pay more than the current three per cent surcharge on their bills but those payments will be extended indefinitely, potentially for years.

Earlier this year the outstanding balance in the variance account exceeded $200 million. The customer surcharge was expected to raise $54.1 million to apply against that. 

In explaining the decision to charge customers directly, N.B. Power said on its website it could no longer afford to deal internally with the cost of unbudgeted expenses like those caused by troubles at Lepreau.