New Brunswick’s Point Lepreau back online after five-month maintenance outage

The Point Lepreau Generating Station is back online after a five-month maintenance outage.

The Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station in New Brunswick is back online, after a five-month maintenance outage.

The outage lasted about two weeks longer than originally planned due to a problem with a turbine bearing that needed to be replaced. It officially returned to service Sunday.

The scheduled maintenance shutdown started in mid-July and NB Power officials said the team has completed more than 23,000 tasks during that time.

When the generating station is offline, it’s estimated to cost the utility between $1-$1.5 million a day because the utility has to find and pay for replacement power along with repairs to the nuclear plant.

The station was only operating 27 per cent of the time during the 2024-25 fiscal year.

NB Power officials have said when Point Lepreau is operating well, so is the utility overall.

Point Lepreau is scheduled for another maintenance shutdown in the spring for 119 days.

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