'Pain all around' from turbine fall into harbour: NB Power CEO
The two turbines that plummeted to the bottom of Saint John Harbour last week are damaged and won't be ready for when the Point Lepreau nuclear reactor comes online next year, said NB Power's chief executive officer.
A team of engineers, divers and two cranes lifted the second of the two Siemens-manufactured 107-tonne turbines on Sunday after it had spent five days under 10 metres of water on the harbour floor.
David Hay, the president and chief executive officer of NB Power, said the damage inflicted on the rotors as a result of the plunge is easy to see, but the full extent of that damage, and that caused by exposure to salt water, isn't known.
How much repairing the rotors will cost won't likely be known for months, Hay said, and as yet there is no clear indication as to who will pay.
"Frankly, Siemens is responsible to deliver fully functioning turbines to us at Point Lepreau. That didn't occur — there is not any discussion on that," Hay said.
"There is going to be pain all around between shippers, manufacturers and NB Power," he added.
Atlantic Canada's only nuclear reactor is undergoing a $1.4-billion refurbishment and the new turbines were expected to increase the plant's power output. Hay said the utility has stored the old rotors and they will be reinstalled as the corporation waits for the new turbines.
Irving Equipment was in charge of moving the machinery onto a barge for shipping to the nuclear plant. After the incident occurred the company launched its own investigation as to how the turbines and the transporter, a long flatbed-like vehicle, slipped off the barge.
The refurbished reactor is supposed to come back online in September 2009 and this mishap will not impact that date. However, the corporation will not have that extra 25 megawatts of power.
"If that [replacement] takes us another year, that will mean some delay costs there. And then we will have to have an outage to put them in. We will try to fit it in with a regular outage but it might take a little longer than a regular outage," Hay said.
Mary Keith, a spokeswoman with Irving Equipment, the company that was contracted to move the machinery, said crews removed the first turbine, a piece of loading equipment, and then the final turbine, all intact and all in a span of three days.
"There's been some good work done by the teams assembled here," Keith said. "We're pleased to see the lift was achieved without incident and done safely."
NB Power estimates that each turbine is worth $10 million. Captain Al Soppitt, the president and chief executive officer of the Saint John Port Authority, said the turbine spill hasn't affected port operations.
"We were quite fortunate these last few days we had no ships scheduled for that terminal and that berth and I think they've done very well in getting those pieces out so quickly," Soppitt.