(Updates status of injured, adds background on plant, paragraphs 4-6, 15-18) CHICAGO, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Six people were injured in an explosion and fire at the We Energies <WEC.N> power plant in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, a company spokesman said. The morning explosion occurred in the coal-handling facility of the plant, 20 miles south of Milwaukee. The cause remained unclear, We Energies spokesman Brian Manthey said. We Energies is a unit of Wisconsin Energy Corp. One person suffered third- and second-degree burns, three were listed in fair condition, and two were treated by hospital staff and sent home. All six were contractors who were putting up scaffolding for repairs inside the 65-foot-tall silo housing a dust-collection mechanism, which caught fire. The blaze was under control within an hour of the explosion, Manthey said. The 1,135-megawatt, four-unit power plant was still operating normally after the explosion, Manthey said. "It doesn't look as if we'll need to curtail generation, at least in short term," he said. The dust-collection mechanism in a portion of the power plant where coal travels before going into the boilers at each of the four operating units. The explosion occurred just before 11 a.m. CST (1700 GMT). By late afternoon, Manthey said company officials had yet to determine the extent of damage. If there is substantial damage, the power plant's generation output could be curtailed, he said. The Oak Creek plant at 1,135 megawatts can serve about 900,000 households. One more unit is expected to be on-line at the end of 2009 and a second new unit in 2010. The new units will about double the current output of Oak Creek. The current four units opened in 1959, 1961, 1965 and 1967. The plant burns up to 10,000 tons daily of Power River Basin coal shipped from Wyoming. We Energies is in mediation with Bechtel Power Corp over $485 million Bechtel wants for construction delays for the two new units at Oak Creek. Bechtel blamed bad weather and local labor conditions for construction delays in the $2.2 billion project. If Bechtel wins, it would add to the cost of Oak Creek, already the most expensive construction project in Wisconsin history. Late last year, Bechtel told Wisconsin Energy Corp. it would miss a September 2009 deadline for the first of the two new 615-megawatt units. (Reporting by Karl Plume and Bernie Woodall; Editing by David Gregorio)
