Community Matters: A decade of eight-unit operation

Bruce Power recently marked a decade of eight-unit operation, producing safe, clean and reliable electricity for the people of Ontario, following the Bruce A restart projects.

Oct. 16, 2012, Bruce Power’s Unit 2 was connected to the Independent Electricity System Operator grid following a 17-year lay-up, marking the return to eight units operating on the Bruce Power site. Unit 1 had previously been brought back on-line, Sept. 19, 2012, 15 years after being shut down.

The 1990s represented a dark time for our communities after all Bruce A units were shut down when the province was facing the largest surplus capacity of electricity in its history. When Bruce Power was formed in 2001, it committed to restarting Units 3 and 4, paving the way for the return of eight-unit production that helped Ontario phase out coal by 2014.

Now, with nuclear enjoying a renaissance as a recognized source of clean energy around the world, Bruce Power is again leading the way, supplying 30 per cent of Ontario’s clean electricity and completing Major Component Replacement (MCR) projects over the next decade to help meet the province’s increasing demands and achieve climate-change goals.

With the Unit 6 MCR project progressing well and plans in place to refurbish Units 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 over the next decade, Bruce Power is committed to helping the province achieve its Net-Zero goals by providing clean, safe and reliable energy for decades to come.

Following completion of the Life-Extension Project, the total output of the facility will result in the avoidance of 15-million metric tonnes of CO2e per year from carbon-emitting sources.

Bruce Power has proven that refurbishing and extending the life of its units will allow them to operate safely and with improved performance. During the MCR outages, key nuclear equipment, such as steam generators and vault pipework, is removed and replaced.

While each unit is in outage, other support systems will be upgraded to ensure a healthy and revitalized reactor is brought back on-line at the completion of the refurbishment work.

In May, before it was removed from service for a planned maintenance outage, Unit 2 set a record post-refurbishment run of 626 days of continuous on-line operation, more than doubling the previous record set by Unit 2 following its return to service in 2012. This milestone came in the reactor’s 45th year since being put into service in 1977 and is significant as it demonstrates the value of refurbishing Ontario’s nuclear fleet.

Through improvements and innovations to its units and infrastructure as part of Bruce Power’s Project 2030, the company will invest in innovative upgrades to raise its eight-unit maximum capacity to 7,000 megawatts (MW) by 2030. The Bruce Power site currently has an eight-unit capability of 6,550 MW.

If you have any questions, reach out to info@brucepower.com.