OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Bringing this series back to life, Bruce Power has added capacity (uprates) to two units at the Bruce A plant.
Originally, the Bruce A units were oversized thermally for their expected electrical output because they produced process steam to run the adjacent sprawling heavy water plant, that was constructed due to the expected demand for deuterium corresponding with C6 and C9 foreign sales. Of course those sales never materialized once the pause from Chernobyl took hold and eventually the plant was dismantled.
As I've mentioned previously, the Bruce units have the highest thermal capacity of any in our fleet with 480 fuel channels with 13 bundles each. That's 480 more bundles than Darlington, the plant that currently houses our highest output units (~880MWe). The Bruce A units have the same thermal capacity as the Bruce B units, which were originally 860MWe before the whole site was derated in the 90's.
Bruce Power has been putting considerable effort into uprating these units and increasing output. Unit 1 seems to be the first to really reach its threshold, going from 768MWe to 816MWe now. Unit 2 appears to be joining it, it broke 800MWe today:
Unit 2 recently returned from a maintenance outage and I had (well-based) suspicions that uprate activity would be part of that outage, based on the success with Unit 1. Seems I was on the money.
Now, what do these uprates mean, contextually? Well, the site goal is 7,000MWe.
Currently, this is the status of the derates at the plant:
So:
- Bruce A is limited to 92.5% full power
- Bruce B is limited to 93.0% full power
So, these uprates are all based on thermal derate capacity.
Pretending for a minute we can just work the math backwards on the electrical output, 816MWe with the derate pulled is 882MWe. Multiply that by 4 and we've got a 3,528MWe station. Do the same with the B plant and you are easily past 7,000MWe, which I assume is why they are so confident on being able to achieve that goal, they know what the units can produce.
As you can see, Unit 6 is down for refurbishment. I'm hoping we get to see it run to 100% capacity upon its return. That will really tell us what things will look like. Bruce has been working with their fuel supplier, Cameco, on an updated fuel bundle design that should allow them to petition the CNSC to have the derate pulled. As you can tell, that will be a game-changer for the plant.
Originally, the Bruce A units were oversized thermally for their expected electrical output because they produced process steam to run the adjacent sprawling heavy water plant, that was constructed due to the expected demand for deuterium corresponding with C6 and C9 foreign sales. Of course those sales never materialized once the pause from Chernobyl took hold and eventually the plant was dismantled.
As I've mentioned previously, the Bruce units have the highest thermal capacity of any in our fleet with 480 fuel channels with 13 bundles each. That's 480 more bundles than Darlington, the plant that currently houses our highest output units (~880MWe). The Bruce A units have the same thermal capacity as the Bruce B units, which were originally 860MWe before the whole site was derated in the 90's.
Bruce Power has been putting considerable effort into uprating these units and increasing output. Unit 1 seems to be the first to really reach its threshold, going from 768MWe to 816MWe now. Unit 2 appears to be joining it, it broke 800MWe today:
Unit 2 recently returned from a maintenance outage and I had (well-based) suspicions that uprate activity would be part of that outage, based on the success with Unit 1. Seems I was on the money.
Now, what do these uprates mean, contextually? Well, the site goal is 7,000MWe.
Currently, this is the status of the derates at the plant:
So:
- Bruce A is limited to 92.5% full power
- Bruce B is limited to 93.0% full power
So, these uprates are all based on thermal derate capacity.
Pretending for a minute we can just work the math backwards on the electrical output, 816MWe with the derate pulled is 882MWe. Multiply that by 4 and we've got a 3,528MWe station. Do the same with the B plant and you are easily past 7,000MWe, which I assume is why they are so confident on being able to achieve that goal, they know what the units can produce.
As you can see, Unit 6 is down for refurbishment. I'm hoping we get to see it run to 100% capacity upon its return. That will really tell us what things will look like. Bruce has been working with their fuel supplier, Cameco, on an updated fuel bundle design that should allow them to petition the CNSC to have the derate pulled. As you can tell, that will be a game-changer for the plant.