Less than a fortnight since completing an extended maintenance period, the Point Lepreau nuclear generating station has shut down again. N.B. Power’s chief nuclear officer, Steve Bagshaw, announced that the plant was taken offline on Sunday morning to address a gasket issue in the turbine system on the non-nuclear side.
Workers at the plant noticed steam escaping from a gasket on Friday and monitored the situation over the weekend before deciding to proactively take the station offline to replace the leaking gasket. Bagshaw assured that there was no danger to staff, the public, or the environment.
The faulty gasket was discovered during the plant’s power ramp-up process. While increasing the plant’s power level to 93% on Friday, workers identified the leak. Point Lepreau had resumed operations on August 19 after a 132-day maintenance period that exceeded the initial schedule by a couple of weeks.
Bagshaw acknowledged that the maintenance outage took slightly longer due to its complexity, involving over 20,000 tasks. The current repair is anticipated to be completed by the end of September.
Point Lepreau has faced recurring unplanned and prolonged outages in recent years, mainly attributed to issues on the non-nuclear side of the plant. Following a four-year refurbishment that concluded in 2012, the non-nuclear side, responsible for converting nuclear reactor heat into electricity through a turbine system, was not included.
This marks the third consecutive year that equipment failures have delayed Lepreau’s return to service after maintenance. In 2024, the plant was offline for over eight months due to a critical issue with its main generator identified post a scheduled maintenance outage. Subsequently, in 2025, Lepreau underwent a 163-day outage for a generator rewind on the non-nuclear side, with additional delays caused by a bearing failure during restart procedures.
To address reliability challenges, N.B. Power has planned significant capital investments for Lepreau. The utility intends to spend $88.4 million over three years on external experts to resolve the plant’s reliability issues. Laurentis Energy Partners, a subsidiary of Ontario Power Generation, was hired last fall to provide specialized expertise and operational support to the plant.
During the shutdown of Lepreau, N.B. Power is relying on energy from its alternative generation facilities and imported electricity, primarily sourced from Quebec. Evidence presented during rate hearings in March highlighted that each day of avoided downtime at Lepreau could save the utility an estimated $1.9 million.