Cameco Port Hope plant restart faces delays

TORONTO, Sept 26 (Reuters) - Cameco Corp (CCO.TO) has not yet restarted its Port Hope, Ontario, nuclear fuel conversion plant, but hopes to have it up and running sometime over the next week, a company spokesman said on Friday.

The uranium hexafluoride plant was shut down last year when it was discovered uranium and arsenic had leaked into the soil and ground water beneath the plant.

Cameco said on Sept. 16 it had resolved the leak problem and expected to restart the plant just a few days later.

However, the restart has taken longer than initially anticipated.

"They are going through a very careful, methodical restart process, and sometimes that takes a bit longer than they think," said Bob Kelly, a spokesman for the Port Hope plant.

He said the plant should be up and running within days.

The Port Hope facility is one of only three commercial suppliers of uranium hexafluoride in the western world, Cameco said. Uranium hexafluoride is enriched and fabricated at other sites into fuel pellets used in most nuclear reactors.

Shares of Cameco, the world's largest uranium producer, were down C$1.80 at C$24.36 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Friday.

($1=$1.03 Canadian) (Reporting by Cameron French; editing by Peter Galloway)