Protection of Health, Safety and Environment During Point Lepreau Refurbishment

Abstract

On July 29, 2005 Premier Bernard Lord announced that the Province of New Brunswick will proceed with the refurbishment of Point Lepreau Generating Station with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) as the general contractor. The work involves: the completion of the detailed planning, engineering and procurement work that has been underway since the year 2000, the construction of waste storage structures at the Solid Radioactive Waste Storage Facility in 2006, the establishment of temporary facilities to support the outage, and the maintenance outage itself which is scheduled to run from April 2008 through to September 2009. The major activity during the outage would be the replacement of all three hundred and eighty Fuel Channels, Calandria Tubes and connecting feeder pipes. This activity is referred to as Retube. NB Power Nuclear would also take advantage of this outage to conduct a number of additional repairs, replacements, inspections and upgrades. These collective activities are referred to as Refurbishment. This would allow the station to operate for an additional 25 to 30 years. A key component of the planning and execution of the outage is the consideration and planning required to ensure the protection of health, safety and environment (HSE). This paper provides a high level overview of the steps being taken to achieve the required protection.