N.B.'s Point Lepreau nuclear plant ranked as poor performer among international peers

Since 2014 the Point Lepreau nuclear generating station has been one of the poorest-performing reactors among dozens of similar facilities in five countries, a pair of unflinching reports commissioned by N.B. Power about the troubled plant suggest.

The U.S.-based energy consulting firm ScottMadden found N.B. Power spent less on upkeep at Lepreau since it completed a major refurbishment in 2012 than owners of more reliable reactors, and they provided evidence that Lepreau's troubles may be connected to a failure to invest enough on maintenance.

The reports also suggest Lepreau's performance may worsen in future years if amounts spent on keeping ahead of trouble are not increased significantly.

"Although the refurbishment initially improved Point Lepreau's performance as expected, in recent years, Point Lepreau has missed its reliability-related projections for outage durations, capacity factors, forced loss rates, and other measures," wrote the company in one of two separate reports.

"ScottMadden found that Point Lepreau largely has performed in the bottom quartile among single-unit sites and in the bottom half among individual CANDU units from 2014-2021, and their capital spending has largely been in the bottom quartile among single-unit sites." 

The reports on Lepreau, which were delivered to N.B. Power in December, have been submitted to the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board as evidence in N.B. Power's upcoming rate hearing.

In one report, ScottMadden was asked to evaluate N.B. Power's plans to increase and then decrease capital spending at the nuclear plant over the next decade. In the second, it was asked to assess N.B. Power's current projections of Lepreau's likely future performance.

Both painted unflattering pictures of the nuclear plant's recent past and potential future.

Lepreau, originally commissioned in 1983, had a disappointing production record in its first 25 operational years that has continued over the last decade, despite a major overhaul of its reactor and nuclear components between 2008 and 2012.

In the 11 years from 2013 and 2023, Lepreau suffered 400 more days of downtime than originally projected, costing the utility up to $1 billion in lost production and repair costs that have been battering the utility's finances.

Some of that excess downtime was caused by scheduled maintenance outages that took longer than planned, and about half were "forced loss" days caused by sudden and unexpected breakdowns at the plant.

In its review, ScottMadden looked at Lepreau's operational performance over eight years ending in 2021 and compared it to 42 "peer" facilities. 

Those included 23 other functioning CANDU reactors in Canada, Argentina, Romania and South Korea, and 19 non-CANDU "single unit" reactor sites in the United States.

Planned and unplanned downtime at Lepreau was consistently worse than the group average over the eight years, with ScottMadden drawing particular comparisons to a pair of Romanian CANDU reactors at Cernavoda that it said were an "identical" design to Lepreau.