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Sentinel
Northern
www.northernsentinel.com
Volume 57 No. 22
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
1.34 INCLUDES TAX
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Capt. Georg von Trapp — otherwise known as Nathan Closter — inspects the von Trapp Children during the May 18 performance of The Sound of Music, presented by Mount Elizabeth Secondary’s Musical Theatre department. Cameron Orr
RTA may complete Kemano tunnel Malcolm Baxter Although the twinning of the Nechako ReservoirKemano tunnel has not been officially approved by the Rio Tinto Alcan board, RTA vice-president Paul Henning hopes initial work on the project can begin this summer. At present there is the original tunnel built in the 1950s and a half completed second tunnel - known as T2 - from the ill-fated Kemano Completion Project which was constructed in the early 1990s. The plan is to complete T2 and connect it to T1 rather than the original plan which would have seen the former feed a second power generating set-up. Henning said the project is currently in the permitting stage. Application was made to Canadian Environmental Assessment which handed it off to federal Fisheries for what’s called a screening process. He said they were in the final stages of that and he hoped it would be approved “very soon”. Provincially, the company was seeking approval for reduced flows to the Kemano River that would result from the connection work over this and next Summer. The province will also be looking at the company’s plans to dispose of the “spoil”, the rock excavated in com-
pleting T2. Henning said that ideally RTA wanted to complete the connection work at the Kemano end before the new smelter fired up in 2014. He explained that at the moment the existing plant was only using 50 per cent of the power being produced at Kemano - that’s because potlines have been closed down as part of the modernisation project (KMP) - with the rest being sold to BC Hydro. However, when the connection work begins, RTA will “switch off” the flow of power to the provincial utility and still have enough power to run what remains of the old smelter. That work is expected to take two to three months in each of the next two summers. When the connection is completed, RTA will re-evaluate phase two of T2 which would be to complete the halfbuilt tunnel connecting Kemano to the Nechako Reservoir. “That can be done at any time because it doesn’t interfere with the new plant,” said Henning, adding, “The last thing we want to do is delay start-up of (KMP).” The advantage of the set-up once completed is that there will be two tunnels feeding water to the existing two penstocks with a series of butterfly valves that would allow
RTA to switch from one tunnel to the other if necessary.. “So it’s got much greater flexibility in the future,” Henning said. It would also be possible to use water from both tunnels at once which would have the benefit of a marginal increase in power production via the existing generators. Henning noted that some people seem a bit confused by the fact the new smelter will use more power than the old one yet RTA always touts the increased efficiency of the new technology that will be used in the KMP plant. The answer, he said, is that the new plant will produce significantly more metal. Henning explained the new smelter is being built to maximise usage of the guaranteed (firm) amount of power produced at Kemano each and every day. That’s about 700-720 megawatts and equates to about 420,000 tonnes of aluminum per annum. In the past, the amount of firm power available was about 660 megawatts with a theoretical maximum metal production of 265,000 tonnes. Put another way, Henning said, that translated to an extra 50 megawatts of power producing nearly double the current production. Continued on page 2
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