Canada's Bruce Power Shelves Plan for
2 New Ontario N-Plants

Canada's Bruce Power has announced its decision to withdraw its applications to construct two new nuclear power plants in Ontario. It no longer plans to build a third plant at the existing Bruce site and has scrapped plans for a plant at Nanticoke.

The company said that it will now concentrate on the refurbishment of its existing Bruce A and B plants, rather than build the new Bruce C plant. The refurbishment of the Candu units will bring an additional 6300 MW of electricity online. Bruce A comprises of four units, each with a capacity of 769 MWe, while Bruce B's four units have a capacity of 822 MWe each.

The company submitted its environmental impact statement (EIS) in the past for up to four new reactors of around 1000 MWe capacity each at the proposed Bruce C plant. The exact location and the reactor design to be used had not yet been determined.

In addition, Bruce Power said that, given Ontario's declining demand for electricity, it is no longer planning to construct a new plant at Nanticoke.

Recently, Bruce Power announced that it was considering building a two-reactor nuclear power plant at Nanticoke in southern Ontario. The area is already home to a large coal-fired power plant, due to close down for environmental reasons. AECL's ACR-1000; Areva's EPR and Westinghouse's AP1000 had been under consideration for the plant.

The company said that it has notified the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) that it will withdraw its site license applications and suspend its Environmental Assessments in Bruce County and Nanticoke.

The company's announcement to withdraw its licence applications closely follows the announcement recently by the provincial government of Ontario that it had stopped work towards building new reactors. Bids from abroad were not up to scratch, it said, and it did not have confidence in the future of AECL. Ontario Power Generation's Darlington site had been selected as the best choice for expansion.

The procurement project was a component of a 20 year energy plan launched by the Ontario government in 2006. The plan calls for the 14,000 MWe of nuclear capacity that provides half of electricity to be maintained, requiring new build to replace retiring facilities.