> Bruce Power has successfully restored the four units at Bruce A with the cooperation of private industry, trade unions and the provincial government. The relatively compact site now houses 8 large nuclear units with a total generating capacity of 6,300 MW of emission free electricity. The successful project was driven by creative people applying…
By: Donald Jones, P.Eng. There is a widely held belief that commercial nuclear-electric plants are only capable of baseload operation when in fact they can be more flexible than a natural gas-fired generating station. This belief has led the Ontario government to restrict nuclear generation to 50 percent of total demand, in its Long-Term Energy…
Ben Kenney is the host of theWatt Podcast a well established and popular discussion show about all things energy. We talked about power decisions in Canada, CANDU technology, and New Brunswick’s electricity export plans. Ben Kenney is studying for his PhD in chemical engineering, with a focus on solid oxide fuel cells. He expects to…
The pressure tubes of a CANDU® are in a hostile environment that includes a high neutron flux, hot, high temperature water, and a certain amount of hydrogen and oxygen released by the decomposition of water by radiation.Though the CANDU® has proven itself to be a reliable, cost effective and safe power generation system, there are…
Canada now produces approximately 85 percent of the world’s supply of Co-60 and more than 50 percent of the Co-60 medical therapy devices and medical device sterilizers. Nuclear reactors are not just a source of heat for power production. They are also an abundant source of neutrons, which allows the plants to be in a…
For a time, it appeared that the goal of an independent nuclear industry might not be possible and construction was begun on a reactor plant that used an imported pressure vessel. In many ways a CANDU® nuclear plant is conceptually related to a standard pressurized water reactor plant system. It has two separate heat transfer…
Canada decided that it would be prudent to develop a reactor design that could operate on natural uranium. This decision was consciously aimed at making the Canadian nuclear industry independent of American political decision making. One of the highest compliments that you can pay to a submariner is to describe him as someone with a…
CANDU® reactors are designed to operate with fuel that is composed of natural uranium dioxide formed into cylindrical pellets and inserted into zirconium alloy tubes. No enrichment is necessary. An understanding of some of the features of the CANDU® reactor design makes it obvious that many of the negative perceptions about nuclear power are, in…