Nuclear operator Bruce Power says, the company reached a major milestone this week with the substantial completion of the construction phase of its Unit 6 MCR Project on-time and on-budget.
The company say the focus will now shift to returning the unit to service later this year.
A release says, Unit 6, which provides enough electricity to power a city the size of Hamilton, is “on track to resume providing clean, reliable energy to Ontario homes and businesses later this year.” The company says the MCR Ontario’s largest clean-energy infrastructure project.
Bruce Power says its Operations staff will now begin refuelling the unit with 5,760 fuel bundles, while other lead-out activities and regulatory inspections will be completed to return it to Ontario’s electricity grid in the fourth quarter of this year.
Unit 6 was the first of six units Bruce Power and its partners will refurbish between 2020 and 2033, a privately funded investment into Units 3-8 that will extend the life of the site through 2064.
The second unit to undergo major component replacement is Unit 3 which was taken offline March 1.
Bruce power says, “The construction phase of the Unit 6 MCR, completed with execution partner Shoreline Power Group and a multitude of talented and dedicated tradespeople from the Ontario Building Trades, included the removal and replacement of 960 feeder tubes, 480 fuel channels, and 480 calandria tubes. Steam generator work was completed earlier this year by SGRT a 50/50 joint venture between Aecon and SGT (a partnership between Framatome and United Engineers & Constructors).”
Mike Rencheck, Bruce Power’s President and CEO says in a statement, “I am proud of how we all worked together, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, to finish construction building activities, and set ourselves up for success in our subsequent MCRs. We learned a lot, and new innovations will be implemented on future MCRs making them faster and less expensive.”
