Bruce powers up dormant reactor

News of nuclear unit’s return coincides with legal challenge to Darlington expansion

fter 15 years in mothballs, Bruce Power’s Unit 1 nuclear reactor has delivered power to Ontario’s electric grid.

Whether that’s good news or not depends on where you sit.

For Bruce Power, the event was a welcome milestone in a tough project.

“It’s a pretty happy place,” company spokesman John Peevers said from the plant near Kincardine.

“It’s been a tough road sometimes, but it’s something that’s cause to celebrate.”

For some environmental groups — who filed a fresh legal challenge Thursday to a pair of planned new reactors in Darlington — it was not good news.

“It’s three years late and $2 billion over budget,” said Shawn-Patrick Stensil of Greenpeace, for whom no nuclear power is welcome.

For power system planners, it may be a mixed blessing, as 1,500 megawatts from Unit 1 and its sister Unit 2 are soon due to flow into a system that, at times, already has too much power.

Unit 2, also idle since the late 1990s, is a few months behind Unit1.

While Unit 1 has delivered power, it’s not yet back in full operation. It’s expected back in full service by the end of the year.

While the Bruce reactors took another step toward restarting, Quebec’s incoming premier Pauline Maurois said Thursday that the province will shut the 675-megawatt Gentilly-2 reactor, the province’s only nuclear plant. The move was consistent with long-standing Parti Québécois policy.

The new power flowing onto Ontario’s system may create headaches. When temperatures are moderate and demand for electricity is low, Ontario sometimes has more power than it can use.

With increasing frequency, Ontario has been forced to export power to neighbouring provinces and states for free. Some export customers, and big industrial power users inside the province, have sometimes even been paid to use power, with the cost of the giveaway being added to all customers’ bills.

Ontario is moving to end the practice of paying out-of-province customers to take surplus power.

But having an extra 1,500 megawatts of supply will exacerbate the surplus in the near term. (Surpluses are expected to shrink when the Darlington nuclear station undergoes a mid-life refit starting in 2016.)

While the fresh nuclear supply from Bruce Power edged closer to the market, two environmental groups are asking federal court to block activity on two planned nuclear reactors at the Darlington power station.

Greenpeace and the Canadian Environmental Law Association have asked federal court to take away a licence recently granted to Ontario Power Generation to start preparing a site for two new reactors. The site preparation licence was granted by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.