Community Matters: MCR project continues safely and efficiently

During the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic, Bruce Power has invested heavily in public-health, health-care and front-line workers, along with businesses and organizations in our communities, and we are doing our part to keep people safe and help set the course for economic recovery.

We’re proud of the role that our workers have played in not only supporting the company’s initiatives but in continuing to get the job done in delivering clean, reliable and low-cost electricity to Ontarians.

It’s been almost 19 months since we launched the Major Component Replacement (MCR) project, which is focused on the replacement of key reactor components, including steam generators, pressure tubes, calandria tubes and feeder tubes. MCR is securing more than 20,000 jobs, directly and indirectly, and an additional 5,000 jobs, annually, that means we’re pouring billions of dollars into the province’s economy.

The refurbishment of Unit 6 began in January, 2020, and this month, we’re scheduled to complete a significant milestone of removing the calandria tubes from the reactor. As Eric Chassard, our executive vice-president of projects and engineering, noted last month, this is a group effort that has the company well on its way to getting Unit 6 back in operation by 2023.

Eric joined Bruce Power in the spring of 2019 with an outstanding track record of delivering multi-billion-dollar projects in France and the United Kingdom before moving to Canada. Everyone is working hard together toward a common goal. We’re seeing the Bruce Power MCR team working side-by-side with our vendor partners to complete this work safely and efficiently.

If you’re in Kincardine over the next several months and walking along the beautiful Lake Huron shoreline, take a look to the north and you should be able to see one of the largest mobile cranes in the world. The Mammoet PTC-35 is being put together at Bruce B - a daunting task that takes six weeks of assembly by a crew of a dozen workers - to be used in the removal and replacement of six 400,000-pound steam generators, beginning toward the middle of July.

For everyone involved, it’s an exciting step in our MCR project which is the result of preparation over the past five years, and truly highlights innovation in the nuclear industry and a commitment from our managers, workers and supply-chain partners to doing the work at the highest level of performance and with safety as the top priority.

This summer will, hopefully, see the final months of this once-in-a-generation public health crisis, and we can all look forward to business and organizations operating as usual and having our children return to the classroom in September.

During the summer months, we’re putting the finishing touches on a major renovation of the Bruce Power Visitors’ Centre and we look forward to unveiling the new look once the work is completed and it’s safe to open the doors to the public.

As always, if you have any questions, please E-mail me at james.scongack@brucepower.com. You can also follow me on Twitter at @jscongack.