Bruce 3 is the second unit to undergo Major Component Replacement (MCR). The process involves removing and replacing key reactor components including steam generators, pressure tubes, calandria tubes and feeder tubes and adding 30-35 years to the reactor's operating life. In total, six units at the Bruce site in Ontario are to be refurbished: the first to undergo the process, Bruce 6, returned to commercial operation last September.
Unit 3 was taken offline to begin its MCR outage in March 2023. The removal of feeder tubes, pressure tubes, calandria tubes and other internal components has taken nine months, with the work carried out by the MCR project team, alongside vendor partners Shoreline Power Group (a joint venture between Aecon, AtkinsRéalis and United Engineers & Constructors) and ATS Industrial Automation. The removal of the 480 calandria tubes - seam-welded tubes which penetrate the cylindrical reactor vessel and accommodate the pressure tubes that contain fuel and coolant - was completed 11 days ahead of schedule on 26 July.
Leveraging the experience of tradespeople, and innovation through lessons learned and technological advancement, meant that the removal series was completed in less time than the same work had taken in unit 6's MCR.
"Each successive MCR outage brings an opportunity for performance improvement, and we're committed to returning these units to service safely and successfully to meet Ontario's clean energy needs well into the future," said Laurent Seigle, Bruce Power's executive vice-president, Projects. "To execute a project of this scale and complexity, it takes an ecosystem of nuclear professionals to work together toward a common goal," he added.
Shoreline's millwrights, boilermakers and electricians will now transition to commissioning, operating and maintaining a first-of-a-kind, six-axis robotic tooling system for reactor inspection and installation work including the replacement of 960 feeder tubes and 480 fuel channels as well as the calandria tubes. Automated tooling systems, the majority of which have been designed, tested and manufactured by ATS Industrial Automation, will be used in the cleaning and inspection of thousands of components on both faces of the reactor.
The next Bruce unit to undergo MCR will be unit 4, beginning in 2025. Units 5, 7 and 8 will also be refurbished over the next 10 years. The work will directly and indirectly create and sustain about 1500 jobs over the next 15 years in Grey, Bruce and Huron counties, and throughout Ontario, the companies said.
