Bruce Power sees Ontario Bruce 8 reactor back soon

NEW YORK Aug 17 (Reuters) - Bruce Power LP shut the 795-megawatt Unit 8 at the Bruce nuclear power station in Ontario on Aug. 16 for a brief outage to fix the liquid zone control system, the company said in a release.

The 6,261 MW Bruce station is located in Tiverton on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, about 155 miles (250 km) northwest of Toronto. There are four 750 MW units, 1 to 4, at the A station, which entered service in 1977-1979, and three 822 MW units, 5 to 7, and one 795 MW unit, 8, at the B station, which entered service in 1984-1987.

Unit 7 shut July 30 due to a surplus of baseload generation in Ontario and will likely return in mid August.

All of the other units remained available for service.

The company expected to increase Unit 8's output to about 822 MW by modifying the fuel-loading system later this year.

The company also planned to spend up to C$3.4 billion to restart Units 1 and 2 in early 2010. Ontario Hydro, the former province-owned power company, shut Unit 1 in 1997 and Unit 2 in 1995 because they needed extensive upgrades.

The return of Units 1 and 2 would replace more than 20 percent of the province's 6,400 MW of coal-fired generation, which the government wants to shut by 2014 for health and environmental reasons.

After Units 1 and 2 return, Bruce said it will focus on refurbishing the remaining Units 3-8 rather than build new reactors at Bruce.

In the past, Bruce said it would start working on Unit 3 by about 2011, Unit 4 by about 2016 and the Bruce B units sometime between 2015 and 2020.

One MW powers about 1,000 homes in Ontario.

Bruce Power LP, of Tiverton, Ontario, operates the entire Bruce complex and leases the Bruce B station from Ontario Power Generation, the province-owned generating company.

Bruce Power LP is owned by uranium miner Cameco Corp (CCO.TO) (31.6 percent), energy company TransCanada Corp (TRP.TO) (31.6 percent), BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust, an investment entity owned by Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (31.6 percent), the Power Workers' Union (4 percent) and the Society of Energy Professionals (1.2 percent).

Bruce Power A LP, which leases the Bruce A station from OPG, was set up when Bruce Power and the government agreed to restore the A station to full service. It is a partnership among TransCanada (47.4 percent), BPC (47.4 percent), the Power Workers' Union (4 percent) and the Society of Energy Professionals (1.2 percent). (Reporting by Scott DiSavino)