Tynes Bay Incinerator is another step closer to start-up.

For the first time, there is heat in the oven of the $70-million incinerator on Palmetto Road, Works and Engineering Minister the Hon. Leonard Gibbons said yesterday.

But burning trash was not creating the heat. Burners fired by diesel oil were being used yesterday to heat one of the incinerator's two ovens and cure the bricks and mortar that line them.

To avoid cracking, the ovens must be gradually heated to the 950 degrees Celsius at which household waste would be burned, plant manager Mr. Allan Hunt told The Royal Gazette .

This week, the diesel burners would take one oven to about 300 C. Starting this weekend, the first waste would be burned as the curing and testing process continued. Curing of the second incinerator oven would not begin until June.

The first Bermudian "process controllers'' being trained to operate the plant started work yesterday, Mr. Gibbons said.

There was an odour problem at the incinerator yesterday. Garbage which arrived last week had been sitting in the plant's large pit longer than normal. And because there was no fire in the oven, air was not being sucked from the smelly pit area to feed the flames.

There would always be some odour inside the huge incinerator building, Mr.

Hunt said. But "you won't have the type of smell nuisance associated with landfill.'' Outside the plant, "you might get a whiff'' sometimes, depending on the wind, he said.

Starting on Saturday, loud noises would be heard from the incinerator as the boilers and tubes were vented, he said.

First, citric acid was used to wash the inside of the boilers. For a few days, not including Sunday, high-pressure steam would be forced through to remove any welding rods or melted metal left over from the plant's construction, Mr.

Hunt said.

The high-frequency noise, which would last about 15 minutes at a stretch, would result when the steam at 640 pounds per square inch of pressure was forced out one end of a six-inch pipe, he said.

The plant, which would employ about 20, was on time and within budget, Mr.

Gibbons said. "I'm delighted, to say the least.'' The Minister said that to avoid contamination by household batteries, metal cans, and other prohibited items, the ministry was being "a bit selective'' about what waste was trucked to the incinerator.

He was to announce new recycling measures to help purify the waste stream at a news conference today.

Once it is up and running, each of the plant's two waste streams can burn about six tons of waste per hour. And the incinerator would produce up to 3.8 megawatts of electricity, about two percent of Belco's output.

Mr. Hunt, the 46-year-old Bermudian plant manager, joined the Ministry of Works and Engineering in 1985. Earlier, he was supervisor of solid waste disposal, overseeing the Pembroke Dump and Sallyport.

To prepare for his new post, he has trained abroad at incinerators in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

Of the two major overseas contractors, civil engineer Pihl and Son of Denmark leaves in June, while electrical-mechanical contractor Von Roll Ltd. of Switzerland remains until the end of the year.