A significant planned maintenance and inspection outage is underway on Bruce Power’s Unit 6.
It's the final planned outage on the unit before it undergoes a four-year major component replacement project to refurbish and extend the operating life of the unit.
In addition to thousands of other tasks, workers will remove 24 Cobalt adjuster rods and the Cobalt-60 will be used in sterilization of medical devices throughout the world.
The 24 rods will be replaced with four that contain a different style of cobalt pellet which will support lifesaving gamma knife surgery for cancer patients when it is harvested in two years.
Unit 6 will return to service in the fourth quarter of 2017 in time to meet Ontario’s high winter demand.
"We have a large electrical program and to support, that Bruce Power has hired 150 additional electricians to help complete the work," said Len Clewett, executive vice president and chief nuclear officer. "Safety will continue to be paramount and we’ve enhanced our training and qualifications for incoming supplemental staff to ensure that everyone goes home safely at the end of every day."
Cobalt-60 (Bruce Power photo)
