Bruce Nuclear Generating Station

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OVERKILL

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So my wife and I toured this facility on Friday of last week. The tour was around 45 minutes, but electronic devices were not allowed unfortunately, so I don't have any fantastic pictures, just some outside ones that I've posted below.

Basic information about the plant:

- Bruce Nuclear commenced construction in 1970, following up the highly successful Pickering facility, and was completely operational in 1979. Two reactors were laid up in the 90's by Ontario Hydro due to some minor issues. By the time Bruce Power took over managing the facility, all of the "A" site was offline.

- Ontario CANDU facilities have, historically, been built in two phases with groups of 4 reactors. Bruce was the 2nd of such a build, with Pickering being the first. Bruce "A" was subsequently the first 4x reactor site, with "B" coming online later.

- The "A" site consists of 4x779MW units, which were originally 750MW units, but were upgraded by Bruce Power during the recommissioning of "A", which also included the refurbishment of units 1 & 2.

- The "B" site consists of 4x817MW units. These are 840MW gross (nameplate) units. Their later date of construction resulted in some improvements that increased their output. They have the same number of fuel channels as "A", which means that theoretically, A could b upgraded to match B's output.

- Total output of the facility, NET, is 6,384MW with an annual production of 48TWh, or enough power to run Denmark with significant excess. This makes Bruce Nuclear the largest operational nuke plant in the world, eclipsed only by a much newer 7-unit site in Japan, which is however, currently offline.

- With no cooling towers, water from Lake Huron is used as the third cooling channel loop, which means that almost 2 billion litres of lake water pass through the facility daily. There is a limit as to the differential between incoming and outgoing water temperature which is around 10C, but average actual temperatures range between 2C and 4C.

- Bruce Power, a private corporation, took over operation of the facility from Ontario Power Generation in the early 2000's. Bruce Power, out of pocket, had units 1 &2 refurbished, and brought units 3&4 back online. In 2012, all four reactors in "A" were online, resulting in the first time in decades that the entire Bruce plant was contributing in the grid. This set records for power generation in the province and allowed Ontario to phase out coal generation entirely. Bruce Power will be, starting in 2020, refurbishing the remaining 6 reactors, which guarantees operation of the plant until the 2060's, with the oldest units of the "A" plant being retired starting in 2043. At this time there is no plan for reactor replacement, however that may change.

- There are a number of "other" operations taking place on the site including a Medical Marijuana growing facility, an Ethanol plant as well as the production of various medically applicable products like Cobalt 60 and various isotopes, all of which are profit for Bruce Power.

- Bruce Nuclear is the 2nd cheapest mode of generation in the province at $0.066/kWh. This is a 30-year contract with the IESO, which allows for the $12 billion dollar cost of the impending refurbishment.

- The Bruce Nuclear facility generates 30% of Ontario's power.


Bruce "A" site:


Bruce "B" site:
 
Nice, that's where Australia should be headed, but we are too fixated on ten second sound grabs by uneducated peple with agendas.
 
They could throw some old wire spools down with those high tension towers and have paintball teams duke it out.
wink.gif
 
Originally Posted By: Shannow
Nice, that's where Australia should be headed, but we are too fixated on ten second sound grabs by uneducated peple with agendas.


Yes, that's extremely unfortunate. The Canadian government has just given AECL (Atomic Energy Canada Limited) close to $2 billion to pursue SMR (Small Modular Rector) technology, and we are currently experiencing a flood of bids for the project, from which a number will be chosen and constructed at the upgraded Chalk River location. OPG is actively pursuing this venue as a way forward with nuclear technology post-Pickering, which begins its shutdown in 2024. The idea is to move forward with more dispersed SMR technology to bring generation closer to demand.

We expect operational examples inside the 7 year timeline for the project, after which commercial deployment is expected to commence via OPG.
 
I am hoping that fusion will be a reality for commercial use in my lifetime.

It would make electricity close to free and with cheap electricity we could extract CO2 from the air and capture it.
 
Originally Posted By: Donald
I am hoping that fusion will be a reality for commercial use in my lifetime.

It would make electricity close to free and with cheap electricity we could extract CO2 from the air and capture it.


+1
 
Thorium is the only source that makes sense. Uranium is just a massively expensive and Dangerous fuel.
Lots of Power!!!
 
king forward to thorium (go a little piece of thorite hanging up at work).

Uranium is fine too..just that the old style reactors had a weapons programme to go with them...the modern versions, like the CANDU don't have that byline.
 
Originally Posted By: Koz1
Thorium is the only source that makes sense. Uranium is just a massively expensive and Dangerous fuel.
Lots of Power!!!


The latest CANDU reactors are capable of running on Thorium, we simply have not built any (however China has 4x of them, but are running them on spent LWR fuel).

Uranium is plentiful and cheap in Canada, that's why there's been no desire to pursue even something as basic as fuel reprocessing.
 
I was in Kincardine last weekend. If I had known that tours were available I would have been first in line. As it was, i enjoyed the beach, swimming, kayaking, sailing and biking on the miles of bike trails in the area. What a great tourist destination. The main street even shuts down every Saturday night for a parade. I will definitely return.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: cb450sc
I was in Kincardine last weekend. If I had known that tours were available I would have been first in line. As it was, i enjoyed the beach, swimming, kayaking, sailing and biking on the miles of bike trails in the area. What a great tourist destination. The main street even shuts down every Saturday night for a parade. I will definitely return.


Last weekend as in like yesterday and Saturday? If so, we may have passed each other. I was there from Thursday through Sunday.
 
Originally Posted By: Danno
And we built solar at $0.81/kWh and Wind at $0.18/kWh because _______________ ?????


Well luckily the support for these ridiculously subsidized projects appears to be waning and they are getting cancelled:

Grey HIghlands Wind Project cancelled.

Quite frankly however, this entire episode was moronic. We invested 10's of billions into subsidized wind and solar, then tens of billions more into Natural Gas to prop it up. Then when it was painfully obvious this was going to take things sideways in a hurry, and that this gong show in no way was suitable to replace the coal baseload the Liberals promised to phase out, Bruce Power's refurb project steps in and makes it possible. Then we end up with 30+ year further commitments to Nuclear with the Darlington and Bruce refurb projects, on top of which we now have AECL actively pursuing SMR's as inexpensive positional reactive baseload providers with OPG having every intention to start phasing them in as soon as they are available.

What should have been done is what OPG proposed at the onset: Add two or more reactors to Darlington. Problem solved. It would have been at a fraction of the cost, we would have been able to wean ourselves off coal quickly, and we wouldn't have this subsidized disaster that we have presently. And its not like we didn't end up going ahead with Nuclear anyways, we did, so we are in it for the long haul, it would have made far more sense to leverage that as a more cost effective solution from the get-go and avoid this lunacy.
 
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
Originally Posted By: Danno
And we built solar at $0.81/kWh and Wind at $0.18/kWh because _______________ ?????


Well luckily the support for these ridiculously subsidized projects appears to be waning and they are getting cancelled:

Grey HIghlands Wind Project cancelled.

Quite frankly however, this entire episode was moronic. We invested 10's of billions into subsidized wind and solar, then tens of billions more into Natural Gas to prop it up. Then when it was painfully obvious this was going to take things sideways in a hurry, and that this gong show in no way was suitable to replace the coal baseload the Liberals promised to phase out, Bruce Power's refurb project steps in and makes it possible. Then we end up with 30+ year further commitments to Nuclear with the Darlington and Bruce refurb projects, on top of which we now have AECL actively pursuing SMR's as inexpensive positional reactive baseload providers with OPG having every intention to start phasing them in as soon as they are available.

What should have been done is what OPG proposed at the onset: Add two or more reactors to Darlington. Problem solved. It would have been at a fraction of the cost, we would have been able to wean ourselves off coal quickly, and we wouldn't have this subsidized disaster that we have presently. And its not like we didn't end up going ahead with Nuclear anyways, we did, so we are in it for the long haul, it would have made far more sense to leverage that as a more cost effective solution from the get-go and avoid this lunacy.


Had this discussion with younger voters in the family this week. Elected politicians did what they said they would do.

If there is voter's remorse, just need to look in the mirror for the blame and for not understanding the implications.
You will be reminded every time you pay your electrical bill.

Wouldn't the many billions wasted be better spent on elderly health care, infrastructure hardening, highway improvements, etc, etc????
 
Originally Posted By: Danno


Wouldn't the many billions wasted be better spent on elderly health care, infrastructure hardening, highway improvements, etc, etc????


That's a touchy subject but yes, for a province north of 300 billion in the hole, and with healthcare facility costs also impacted by the hydro crisis, it would have been far better for everyone had we taken the sane route. Rates would have stayed low and we would have been able to put some of that money toward actually lowering the provincial debt, and some of it toward healthcare.

But the optics of that was all wrong, we wanted to be "Green like Europe" and so we followed in their steps on the subsidized nonsense
smirk.gif
 
The generation part of my almost impossible to understand electric bill is going up 53 % shortly while the ecowhackjobs sit on their hands and oppose more natural gas line capacity, instead supporting 20 cents a KWH windmills. A high ranking political hack sold the lawmakers on "deregualtion" and "competition" in the generation sector, then took a job with a law firm representing the power industry. Competition ..... not so you'd notice.
 
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
Originally Posted By: cb450sc
I was in Kincardine last weekend. If I had known that tours were available I would have been first in line. As it was, i enjoyed the beach, swimming, kayaking, sailing and biking on the miles of bike trails in the area. What a great tourist destination. The main street even shuts down every Saturday night for a parade. I will definitely return.


Last weekend as in like yesterday and Saturday? If so, we may have passed each other. I was there from Thursday through Sunday.



Small world, I was there from Thursday to Sunday as well. Had a cottage on Boiler Beach Road.
 
Originally Posted By: Donald
I am hoping that fusion will be a reality for commercial use in my lifetime.

It would make electricity close to free and with cheap electricity we could extract CO2 from the air and capture it.
Not very likely but you can always hope Cold Fusion U (University of Utah) will hit the jackpot next time around. Nuclear fusion occurring in a small laboratory experiment and yet SLC wasn't the hottest site west of Chernobyl.
 
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