Canada's Bruce Nuclear Power Station largest in the world (Duncan Hawthorne)

To Plant: Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, Kincardine, Ontario, Canada See full story at link below: Link: http://www.powermag.com/bruce-nuclear-generating-station-kincardine-ontario-canada/ Bringing four units back online and extending the life of four sister units has made the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station the largest operating nuclear plant in the world. The investments to bring the plant back to full power have also helped enable the province’s phase-out of all coal generation.

According to Duncan Hawthorne, president and CEO of Bruce Power, 2012 was one of the most successful years in the company’s history. The $7 billion investment to revitalize four dormant CANDU Bruce A units (1 through 4) while extending the operating life of the four Bruce B units (5 through 8) made it the largest operating nuclear power facility in the world. The current 6,300-MW capacity supplies onequarter of Ontario’s electricity and provides enough replacement power for the province to achieve its goal of shuttering all coal-fired plants by 2014.

For successfully completing numerous first-of-a-kind engineering accomplishments through innovation, transforming its workforce through new hiring and training, and positioning the site for long-term stability to achieve the province’s environmental goals, Bruce Generating Station is recognized as a 2013 POWER Top Plant.

The Home Stretch: Units 1 and 2 Refurbishment Bruce Power is a business partnership consisting of Cameco Corp., Trans-Canada Corp., BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust, the Power Workers Union, and the Society of Energy Professionals. When Bruce Power took over the plant site on Lake Huron in May 2001, only half of the eight CANDU reactors were generating electricity. After returning Units 3 and 4 to service in 2004 and 2003, respectively, the company pursued full refurbishment and recommissioning of Units 1 and 2 in October 2005—an effort that was ranked as one of the 100 biggest infrastructure projects in Canada. In the August 2010 issue, POWER reported on this ambitious restart project (“Bruce A Proves There

Are Second Acts in Nuclear Power”), as both units had been out of service for over a decade and a half.

After Bruce A was laid up in the 1990s, fossil generation increased from 12% in 1995 to 29% in 2000. In the past 10 years, with the return of Bruce A units, coal use has dropped by 90% and will be phased out entirely next year. Consequently, since 2005, summer smog days in the Greater Toronto Area have fallen from 45 to 12. (For more on the province’s coal phase-out, see the May 2013 cover story, “Ontario Goes Coal-Free in a Decade.”)

The multibillion dollar project to restore Units 1 and 2 to service involved numerous contractors involved with the installation, replacement, or overhaul of several components (Table 1). Details on some of the projects and specific accomplishments follow.

Table 1. Contractors supporting the Bruce A refurbishment/restart project. Source: Bruce Power Fuel Channel and Calandria Tube Replacement. The “detube-retube” project for both units was deemed critical path and set the pace for the restart project. First-of-a-kind remote-controlled tooling was deployed to cut out the original components, which were

radioactive from years of service. The new components were installed manually by workers inside the reactor vaults. These fuel channel assemblies, approximately 12 meters long from end-to-end, hold the reactor’s uranium fuel bundles during operation.

Twelve bundles are inserted into each channel for a total of 5,760 bundles. Horizontal calandria tubes house the center section, the pressure tube portion of the fuel channel assembly. After much preparation, work to replace 480 fuel channel assemblies and 480 calandria tubes for both units was declared complete in April 2011. . .

Preparing for the Future One area of focus for Bruce Power is ensuring that knowledge from experienced employees is transferred to the next generation of nuclear workers. In 2001, when Bruce Power was formed, succession planning was not in place, and only 10% of employees were 35 or under and almost 50% were over 46. Since then, when 234 new people were hired in 2012, over 32% of employees were 35 and under, while an equal number were between 46 and 55.

By building on the experience gained over the past 10 years, renewing its nuclear infrastructure, and applying knowledge management to maintain a trained and qualified workforce, Bruce Power continues to invest in all eight CANDU units, while providing the province with a reliable baseload source of electricity. ■ —James Hylko is a POWER contributing editor.