Sooooo… They performed routine eol maintenance on their steam turbines and that is news worthy why?
Headline says working reactor and article says
It had been shut down since March 2023
“Routine maintenance successfully completed,” kinda feels like uplifting news at this point.
“Today marks the successful delivery of the project on time and under budget.” I dream of hearing these words more often.
Bruce Power cut into the roof of an operating nuclear station, hauled eight steam generators weighing 100 metric tons each (about 110 US tons) out through the top, and lowered brand-new ones into the same hole. Then it brought the reactor back online on June 8, according to Bruce Power, seven months ahead of schedule.
I was picturing some burly Aussie-Canadian lumberjack called Bruce Power doing all this without breaking a sweat.
Over-hype much? “an operating nuclear station” followed by “then it brought the reactor back online”…
Plot Twist: Bruce Power is the son of Rowsdower and The Kid.
He didn’t even ask permission. He just started cutting the roof and nobody had the courage to ask him what he was doing.
Hard hat and a white truck, you can do anything you ever wanted.
The Ford government loves the idea that we are fast tracking nuclear reactor upgrades “ahead of schedule”.
He’s related to Max Power.
“G’day, I’m Bruce Power, eh?”
I totally thought the same thing.
This guy would immediately drink all of our beer
What the fuck is a US ton…
2000 lb
Or 907 kg. So almost a metric ton, which is 1,000 kg (or 1.000 kg for some).
This shit isn’t at all confusing /s
It’s what we call the things Yanks and North Koreans use to measure weight since ‘ton’ is assumed to be a metric ton for the rest of the world.
(Yes, I’ve seen the Canadian weights and measures flowchart but this is still a funny jab)
Rebuilding our grandparents nuclear reactor, again. A part of our heritage.
That description is like the type of thing I’d say, and other people would tell me how wrong I am.
“Just cut a hole in the roof, and get some machinery to lift the generators out, and then drop new ones in. Easy peasy!”
“It doesn’t work like that! It’s not legos. You can’t just snap a new one in the old spot like plug and play!”
“Why not?”
“Because these are highly sensitive nuclear reactors where small mistakes kill a whole city! These things weigh 100 tons EACH!!!”
“I’m sure it’ll be fiiiiiiiiine!”
And I’d be called an idiot for thinking you could just do this. Yet, in this timeline I never had this EXACT conversation, so I can’t say I was “right”, but I can totally see me having this conversation and being told I was wrong.
People always think I’m wrong, and that you can’t do things just because they aren’t regularly done.
My current thought is that if America wanted to absolutely dominate the globe in terms of GDP, they would install solar panels all along the nevada desert. All that prime solar space is being wasted.
Plop down a few million solar panels, and you could generate enough energy for the entire planet.
The bottleneck wouldn’t be creating power. The bottleneck would be distributing it.
But you could easily put something big and important in the middle of the desert. Something that consumes more energy than you can imagine.
I’m thinking like a 2,000 foot tall voltron mech which is all electric, and powered by solar.
Then if we go to war, you just send these massive mechs. No atomic bomb needed. It just flattens the city, and comes home. Recharges, and goes back out. All they do is switch it’s batteries.
What they going to do? Shoot missles at Voltron? Those missles won’t even dent the armor.
The only reason we don’t have voltron is because the solar power needed would spur a solar explosion, and everyone would be getting solar. Then power utilities wouldn’t make money.
So we don’t have Voltron because Thomas Edison’s ghost is still a capitolist.
This was a wild ride.
By that logic these billionaires and AI companies should be putting their data centers in the ocean or something, completely submerged and water-cooled. But that would be too expensive, and have the awful side effect of actually being somewhat beneficial to the general populace, and we can’t be having nice things around here. /S
We should absolutely be putting solar panels on every single building in Nevada, Arizona, and probably Utah too. I keep telling anyone who will listen that the Vegas Strip could be completely self-sufficient in terms of electricity if each casino just covered their roofs in solar panels.
Something that consumes more energy than you can imagine.
So an AI data center?
I was thinking of Las Vegas, but that works too
Just that you know: they do not cut open the actual reactor. They cut open the engine house (or however it is called in Canada), which houses generators and turbines running on a non-radioactive steam circuit. The engine house is the usually rectangular building next to the actual reactor, the building where all the power lines originate from.
Actually, they did cut open the reactor building. CANDU is a unique type of nuclear reactor in that it uses unenriched natural uranium. It uses a heavy water loop, which is heated by the reactor core (heavy water acts as the moderator). The heat from the heavy water loop is transferred to a light water loop in a steam generator. The generated steam is sent to another building where a turbine turns it into electricity. They replaced those steam generators, which are housed in the reactor building.
Oh my! They were talking about the “hot” to “cold” heat exchanger then. I never thought people would cut open a nuclear reactors protective building except for dismanteling. How the heck do they think they get it closed up again in a safe manner? They basically shot the integrity of the outer protective layer then.
How the heck do they think they get it closed up again in a safe manner?
You should email them an tell them they are stupid.
They did not “Cut a hole”, they removed an access panel designed for this exact purpose.
How CANDU works, why it is safer, and why it does not need enriched uranium.
https://www.brucepower.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/160072_GuidetoBrucePowerReport_R003.pdf
The engine house is called eh reactor in Canada.
those Canadians are clever!
