Ontario nuclear update - January 30th, 2024 - Pickering refurb announced

[OVERKILL]

It's official, the government announced the approval of OPG's plan to refurbish the 4x Pickering B units!


Was there for the event, which had very high attendance!

An interesting twist! The plant will be upgraded with a deep water inlet like at Darlington and Bruce, which means a roughly 1km long tunnel along the bottom of the lake so that it draws in deep, cold water far from shore. This will solve the algae bloom issue the plant has experienced during the summer months, which is a result of being located next to the sewage treatment facility.

 

[stormgol]

excellent news. and they want to restart 'gentilly 2 here.

 

[OVERKILL]

excellent news. and they want to restart 'gentilly 2 here.

Yes, saw that today! That would be great. Would be even better if they built the other 3 units that were supposed to be there.

 

[Danno]

Good news for sure.

$2 billion seems rather low, dare say reasonable?

 

[martinq]

I remember getting a "quick" tour of Pickering (and Bruce) back in the day. Oh how things have changed.

Thanks for the info.

 

[OVERKILL]

Good news for sure.

$2 billion seems rather low, dare say reasonable?

Oh, the project will most certainly not be $2 billion, that's "get things in motion" and the engineering work done money. They'll have to put in the order for the 48 steam generators, all the fuel channels, calandria tubes, feeders, control systems...etc. I expect the price will be more than that per unit, which is still a bargain.

 

[Danno]

Oh, the project will most certainly not be $2 billion, that's "get things in motion" and the engineering work done money. They'll have to put in the order for the 48 steam generators, all the fuel channels, calandria tubes, feeders, control systems...etc. I expect the price will be more than that per unit, which is still a bargain.

Good info, thanks

 

[OVERKILL]

Resurrecting this thread a year later, the government has just announced the release of more money for this project:
https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/...efurbish-pickering-nuclear-generating-station

The Ontario government has approved Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG) plan to proceed with the Project Definition Phase, the next step toward refurbishing Pickering Nuclear Generating Station’s “B” units to secure more power and create thousands of jobs across the province. As part of the preparation for refurbishment, the government has authorized OPG to sign a $2.1 billion contract with CanAtom for early engineering and procurement to prepare for the execution of the Retube Feeder and Boiler Replacement Program, creating more than 2,400 jobs across the province.

*snip*

The Conference Board of Canada projects the full refurbishment project would create 11,000 jobs per year while contributing $19.4 billion to Ontario’s GDP over 11 years. This project would benefit communities across Ontario with approximately 90 per cent of spending happening inside the province. In addition to the work delivered by CanAtom, a joint venture of Aecon and AtkinsRéalis, the Retube Feeder and Boiler Replacement Program will be supported by BWXT Canada in Peterborough and Cambridge, Nutech in Arnprior, Cameco in Port Hope and NWI Precision in Toronto.

OPG will now proceed with the Project Definition Phase of the project, which will last through 2026. The government is supporting OPG’s $4.1 billion budget for this phase of work, bringing the total investment to date in the project to $6.2 billion. OPG will complete a high-quality cost estimate and schedule for the project, progress detailed engineering, further procurement and contracting work, as well as develop a robust project execution plan. This extensive planning and preparation will help ensure the final project, if approved, is completed on time and on budget, consistent with the Darlington Refurbishment Project which is on-budget and ahead of schedule.

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So, we've spent $6.2 billion so far on pre-refurbishment work and procurement. Yes, that's a huge amount of money, but it signals that the project is well and truly underway. A lot of work can be done during regular maintenance outages in advance of refurbishment, so that it doesn't need to be done when the units are offline. A key part of the initial spending is the procurement of long lead time items, such as those mentioned in the first paragraph. BWXT will be manufacturing 48 new boilers for Pickering B (12 per unit), which has a considerable capital cost.

There is also a civil works component to this project that isn't present on the Bruce and Darlington refurbishments, as I mentioned in the OP, and that's the deep water inlet upgrade.

I'm hopeful we see some major uprates to the units to increase their output, which will be made possible by the new boilers and upgraded turbines. This will help offset the considerable capital cost of the project, as it gets spread across more nameplate capacity.