Once-sunken turbines may be salvageable

The two $10-million turbines that ended up on the bottom of Saint John Harbour may be salvageable, according to a senior NB Power official.

It took a team of engineers anddiversas well astwo cranes to lift the two 107-tonne turbines out of 10 metres of water last week. The turbines were destined for Point Lepreau, where they were intended to be a part of the nuclear reactor's $1.4-billion refurbishment project.

Now Darrell Bishop, the executive vice-president of strategy planning for NB Power, said the turbinesmay be able to be repaired in time for the refurbishment.

"The turbines may have to be taken back to their [Siemens] shop and re-evaluated, and in fact it may be that they are still able to refurbish those and meet the schedule," Bishop said.

The NB Power executive said the utility still has "sometime here to make the call" on what to do with the turbines.

The damaged turbines are still sitting dockside in Saint John, each wrapped in plastic and protected from the elements by two makeshift shelters.

Atlantic Canada's only nuclear reactor is undergoing a refurbishment and the new turbines were expected to increase the plant's power output. Last week, David Hay, NB Power's president and chief executive, said the utility has stored the old rotors and they will be reinstalled as the corporation waits for the new turbines.

Bishop said on Tuesday that the utility would prefernot to use the old turbines.

"At the moment, we're going down both paths of ensuring we can put the rotors that were in there. We'll have to do some minor work on those," he said.

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 into the harbour.

The refurbished reactor is supposed to come back online in September 2009 and the turbine mishap will not impact that date.