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Halton Hills power plant demo occurs without incident TransCanada shows how to avoid Middletown explosion By David Lea OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF 3 · Wednesday, April 14, 2010 OAKVILLE BEAVER · www.oakvillebeaver.com TransCanada's 683-megawatt gas-fired power plant in Halton Hills recently completed the same operation, without incident, that led to an explosion at a power plant in Middletown, Connecticut. The energy giant invited local media to the power plant during the cleaning of its natural gas piping, in late March, to explain the difference between the process TransCanada uses when it constructs a plant and process that is believed to have been used at the Middletown plant during its construction. The demonstration was performed to try to ease the fears of Oakville residents that such an explosion could happen at the 900-megawatt gasfired power plant proposed for the Ford-owned lands of 1500 Royal Windsor Dr. If and when the plant is built, it would be within 400 metres of the closest residential area. "When you fabricate the natural gas piping, put it together, you have particles of rust and all the various dust that the pipe comes with and even though you cap it to keep it clean, prior to putting gas into the turbines you have to clean this pipe," said David Small, site manager of the Halton Hills Generating Station (HHGS) Project. "The way we do it is with a high pressure blow where you cap the pipe, fill the pipe with air and then release the air to blow the dirt out. We do that with compressed air first and then we do it with nitrogen." Around the power plant the pipe cleaning process is considered something of a non-event, however, this mundane activity captured widespread attention Feb. 7, when an explosion tore apart a 620-megawatt power plant in Middletown, Connecticut, killing five construction workers. These workers were reportedly cleaning the natural gas piping when the explosion took place. Small said this explosion happened because these construction workers were cleaning the piping in a very unsafe way. "It is believed they did their blow of the piping using high pressure natural gas and the high pressure natural gas was either blown out of the building and blew back in or was blown directly into the building. At the same time, they did not have an exclusion zone, if you are ever using natural gas you always have an exclusion zone, JOHN MCGHIE / METROLAND PEEL MEDIA GROUP HALTON HILLS PLANT: TransCanada's 683-megawatt gas-fired power plant in Halton Hills recently completed the same operation without incident that is believed to have led to an explosion in Middletown, Connecticut earlier this year. because all the electrical equipment is not intrinsically safe you have no open flames and from what we can gather they were also welding at the same time they were blowing the natural gas, hence the explosion," said Small. "There is no way we (TransCanada) would ever purge with natural gas. It's dumb. It's stupid." Small said those working at the HHGS were impacted by the Middletown explosion as one of the men killed was a Hamilton resident, who had previously done work at the HHGS. He also pointed out that nitrogen is used by TransCanada to clean its pipes because it cannot explode. Also, when natural gas finally is introduced, closer to the plant's completion date, the nitrogen will form a buffer preventing air from mixing with natural gas to create an explosive substance, he said. While the cleaning process in Halton Hills may have gone more smoothly than the one in Middletown, opponents of the power plant proposed for Oakville are not impressed. "It's pathetic logic. People make mistakes and just because someone does something right once doesn't mean someone else won't do it wrong the next time and it's not necessarily just that one particular process where they use nitrogen versus the other. There are all sorts of other things that can happen that can cause an explosion. Ask TransCanada how many pipeline explosions they've had in the last three years. There have been five that I'm aware of," said Doug Mackenzie, president of the Citizens for Clean Air residents' group. "The problem with this (Oakville) location is it is so bloody close to people." TransCanada acknowledges that since 2007 there have been five `incidents' on TransCanada's pipeline system. Two were in Ontario, two in Alberta and one in Wisconsin. TransCanada Manager of Corporate Communications and Media Relations James Millar points out that all of these incidents occurred far away from any urban centres and resulted in no injuries. "The Oakville Generating Station would be supplied by a heavy-walled pipeline that adds an extra element of safety in urban centres. TransCanada has never had an incident with this design of pipe. This type of pipe is 50 per cent thicker than pipe used in remote locations," said Millar. "TransCanada follows strict codes and regulations when building pipelines in urban areas and it is important to state the fact that we have never had a pipeline incident in an urban area since the Canadian Mainline was built in 1956. TransCanada operates 60,000 kilometres or 38,000 miles of pipe across North America." 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