Innovation driving Bruce Power's Unit 3 MCR success one year into the project

As Bruce Power’s Unit 3 Major Component Replacement (MCR) project marks one year since it was removed from service, thousands of skilled workers are leveraging lessons learned in Unit 6’s success and innovation to put Unit 3 on track to return to service in 2026, providing clean, reliable energy to Ontario for decades to come.

Unit 6 was returned to service ahead of schedule and under-budget in September, and the three-year Unit 3 MCR outage is on track to improve upon that performance.

“We’re seeing strong performance in our Unit 3 MCR outage with our Bruce Power teams, our tradespeople and our partners hitting our stride as we work together to renew the unit to run safely for the next 30-plus years,” said Eric Chassard, Bruce Power’s executive vice-president of projects and engineering.

“By applying learnings and developing innovative new tools, our team is committed to completing each MCR outage safely, with quality, and with excellent cost and schedule performance.”

Bruce Power’s Life-Extension Program and MCR project is one of Canada’s largest infrastructure projects and Ontario’s biggest clean-energy initiative, which will see Units 3-8 renewed, allowing the eight-unit site to continue to contribute to de-carbonization goals and produce cancer-fighting medical isotopes through 2064 and beyond. The privately-funded projects create $10-billion in economic activity annually and drive the local and provincial economies.

As part of Bruce Power’s agreement with the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), the company is committed to bettering its performance in each successive MCR outage. This is already happening through lessons learned and innovation from Unit 6 being applied to Unit 3, and in planning for Unit 4, which is scheduled to begin in 2025.

This was seen early in the Unit 3 outage when the de-fuel campaign was safely completed 16 days ahead of schedule using lessons learned in Unit 6 and innovation. The 27-day de-fuel program, which saw 5,748 fuel bundles removed from Unit 3’s reactor core, was completed 31 days faster than the same program on the Unit 6 MCR.

Cutting-edge innovation is happening locally. Bruce Power’s state-of-the-art facility in Kincardine is being used to train tradespeople on the use of new automated tools that will be used to improve safety and schedule performance in MCR outages.

Over the past three years, Bruce Power’s tooling and innovation team, Shoreline Power Group, ATS Industrial Automation, and MDA have been developing an eco-system of first-of-a-kind tooling that will be deployed during the inspection and installation series this year, including an inspection series automated delivery table and the remotely-operated calandria tube installation tooling.

The first has the potential to help trade operators clean and inspect 480 fuel channels on each reactor face. The second provides significant enhancements to data collection and error tracking to give skilled trades an unprecedented level of precision and consistency when operating the tool set.

This summer will mark the first time that skilled tradespeople will operate robotics on a nuclear reactor face to save dose while also driving efficiency through time and schedule savings.

Through execution, millwrights, boilermakers, pipe-fitters and electricians will be able to lean on the expertise of a team comprised of the same programmers, nuclear technicians and engineers from Bruce Power and its vendor partners who helped develop and integrate the tools. The trades, vendor community and Bruce Power have worked together to make these break-through innovations successful.

Bruce Power’s tagline is “Innovation at Work” and the company is working every day to leverage technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and advanced robotics, to reduce dose and enhance safe operation and performance.



Shoreline Power Group tradespeople train on the new inspection tooling that will be used this summer in the Unit 3 Major Component Replacement outage