OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Had an amusing exchange with an acquaintance of mine on Twitter this morning regarding the announcement of the 32 steam generators being shipped to Bruce B for the MCR project (refurbishment, life extension, uprates). Bruce Power had posted the below picture:
And he, being a former US plant operator, remarked at how small these were. He worked at a 2-unit plant with 2x940MWe reactors, each SG was good for roughly 500MWe, so 2xSG's per unit. The Bruce B units are 860MWe and each SG can support at least 108MWe, so 8xSG's per unit, 4 units per 4-pack.
I noted that if he thought these were small, at Pickering, each 516MWe unit has 12xSG's. He was gobsmacked. Hard to see, but in the below picture, #54, you can see 3x SG's in the cutaway on the right side with 6x in the non-cutaway section further back in the secondary containment structure.
The CANDU 9's built at Darlington, which were based on the Bruce design, had an improved heat transfer loop configuration and half the number of SG's, so each unit at Darlington has 4 and they would of course be larger. Still twice the amount found in his US example. Interestingly, the SG's at Darlington were not replaced during the Unit 2 refurbishment and my understanding is that they were all deemed to be in sufficiently good condition to run until 2055 (targeted operating life at the moment) and beyond. But OPG hasn't pursued any uprates with Darlington, whereas Bruce is actively working to increase capacity to as close to 7,000MWe as possible.
Any nuke folks here, what's your SG config and count look like?
And he, being a former US plant operator, remarked at how small these were. He worked at a 2-unit plant with 2x940MWe reactors, each SG was good for roughly 500MWe, so 2xSG's per unit. The Bruce B units are 860MWe and each SG can support at least 108MWe, so 8xSG's per unit, 4 units per 4-pack.
I noted that if he thought these were small, at Pickering, each 516MWe unit has 12xSG's. He was gobsmacked. Hard to see, but in the below picture, #54, you can see 3x SG's in the cutaway on the right side with 6x in the non-cutaway section further back in the secondary containment structure.
The CANDU 9's built at Darlington, which were based on the Bruce design, had an improved heat transfer loop configuration and half the number of SG's, so each unit at Darlington has 4 and they would of course be larger. Still twice the amount found in his US example. Interestingly, the SG's at Darlington were not replaced during the Unit 2 refurbishment and my understanding is that they were all deemed to be in sufficiently good condition to run until 2055 (targeted operating life at the moment) and beyond. But OPG hasn't pursued any uprates with Darlington, whereas Bruce is actively working to increase capacity to as close to 7,000MWe as possible.
Any nuke folks here, what's your SG config and count look like?
