POWER March 2011 - 48

POWER IN CANADA
has been deployed across the world. As we
renew the facilities here, we will be renewing
our workforce to retool and service both
Ontario's needs and support the safe, reliable,
and economic deployment of nuclear
energy around the world. Many specialists
that have worked in the nuclear industry
since its early days are now reaching retirement.
What is exciting to me is the number
of young people that are interested to work
in the nuclear industry. We often talk about
the physical equipment, but nuclear energy,
more than any form of generation, is actually
very much a people business. "
Bruce Power was founded in 2001 as
Canada's first privately owned nuclear operator.
It manages eight 750-MW CANDU
reactors. Bruce Power was formed originally
to refurbish these assets. In its 10
years the company has refurbished two of
its units and is now in the late stages of refurbishing
two more. (See " Bruce A Proves
There Are Second Acts in Nuclear Power "
in POWER's August 2010 issue for details
of this project.)
McFadden feels that this private participation
rejuvenated the nuclear sector:
" Bruce Power had a wonderful impact on
the Tiverton community. The refurbishment
project was able to move ahead, thousands
of jobs were created, the community was
stabilized, and a strong company with an
excellent management team was created. "
Duncan Hawthorne, president and CEO
of Bruce Power, has his sights on refurbishing
the remaining four units. " We remain
focused on nuclear operations. You will see
us commit to the $12 billion investment in
the refurbishment of the rest of our fleet.
The market needs it, and the economics are
compelling. That is under our own control,
and within two years we should have made
that commitment. There is no ideological
opposition to this; it is just a matter of negotiating
the terms. "
Hawthorne is now looking to grow the
size of Bruce Power to increase efficiencies:
" Nuclear power stations are like potato
chips: You can't have just one. Running one
single CANDU unit means you have a lot of
overheads. Considered purely on an operational
basis, plants operate better economically
when part of a larger utility. "
The OPG begins its own refurbishment
campaign at Darlington with confidence.
Mitchell explains: " We've learned from
our own experience and have also been
very closely following the experience of
William Smith, senior vice president, energy
sector, Siemens Canada
other refurbishments. We're actively engaged
in being a sponge to the various lessons
learned in not only technical issues,
but also project management, contract
structure, risk mitigation, and a whole host
of things. "
" We've focused very hard over the past
unleash the power of nature
three years on some very important nuclear
projects internal to our company. Every 10
years we have to shut down our reactors for
essential maintenance, which has been successfully
achieved last year at Darlington
and this year at Pickering. We also made a
decision in 2005 to put two of our Pickering
units into decommission, and we have just
achieved this ahead of schedule and under
budget. There was a lot of learning from that
project in not only the planning but also in
the choreography of the execution. "
One of the unique elements of the DarEngineering
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48
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lington refurbishment project is that the
multi-unit station will be refurbished sequentially.
Mitchell explains: " We'll be refurbishing
a unit while operating the other
units. The Pickering shutdown was also
achieved in this manner; we were doing major
work on two of the units while operating
two of the units. 'Choreography' is the
best word I can use to describe the process
that has to occur between the operator and
the refurbishment operation. We've learned
that you can't split the two. They have to be
very tightly integrated. We have also learned
that the amount of planning and the ability
to very precisely understand the scope
of the work before you start is crucial. We
are not planning on starting the Darlington
refurbishment until 2016, but we have already
started the intense planning six years
ahead of schedule to precisely determine the
scope. We are also engaging the private sector
to come up with innovative ideas on how
POWER | March 2011
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POWER March 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of POWER March 2011