[cdn-nucl-l] erroneous reporting in the Ottawa Citizen

[JGinniver@aol.com]

This week there have been a couple of misleading stories in the Ottawa Citizen.  I have added the links below for those that are interested.  The first on Wednesday, titled " How our nuclear reactors failed us" states for example "For cost and safety reasons, the four Bruce A reactors will likely never be restored to service.".  This is despite the fact that approval was recently given to lift the Guaranteed shutdown state on one of the Bruce A reactors with it expected to return to service soon with the other unit that has recently been upgraded returning to service shortly thereafter.  There are a number of comments about the design and operation of CANDUs which I'm not qualified to comment on although they seem at best overly simplistic and at worst a misrepresentation.  I would appreciate feedback on some of these issues as my experience is restricted to Gas Cooled Reactors and the UK/Westinghouse PWR design.  Particularly on the issue of increasing load and feeding this into the grid.  I recognise that the Sizewell B PWR is able to achieve criticality and reach a steady state of reactor power at about 10 - 15% Rx power before running up the turbine and synchronising to the grid.  Once the turbine is synchronised it is then possible to feed in a rate for the increase in generation and gradually increase reactor power and electrical output.  Is this possible on a CANDU, I'm assuming - perhaps rashly - that even if the reactor is stabilised at 60% Rx power it does not have to synchronise the turbine and then load rapidly to an equivalent electrical output as suggested in the newspaper article.  My assumption would be that while stabilised at 60% Rx power and de-coupled from the turbine excess heat is removed either through discharge to atmosphere, or through bypassing the turbine and feeding to the condenser.  And that this process can continue while gradually transferring steam from bypass into the turbine.  Any insight would be appreciated.  The other article today continued to devalue the contribution of nuclear power to the recovery of Ontario's Power Grid. 

http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=930a90cb-3faa-4568-928e-96ca540550c0  Wednesday 20 July 2003
The comments about Bruce "On a tour of the Sir Adam Beck facility in the southwest part of the province earlier this week, Ontario Premier Ernie Eves was told that the Beck hydroelectric generating stations helped restart several reactors that had been shut down at the Bruce facility on Lake Huron. "  is at odds with the information published by Bruce Power on Friday 15th.  The operators at Bruce stated "Within hours of the incident, three of the four units at the Bruce B generating station were reconnected to the provincial grid and are currently being dispatched at the direction of the Independent Electricity Market Operator (IMO).

Together, Units 5, 7 and 8 have 2,400 MW of electricity available when called upon by the IMO. As a result of the disruption, Unit 6 did shut down and will be returned to service as quickly as possible."  Does anyone know whether the Bruce reactors did shutdown, and require external power supplies to re-start.  Or is it simply that three of the reactors were stabilised at 60% Rx power, while de-coupled from the turbines and that external power was required to provide supplies to the plant while the turbines were returned to service? This would mean that electricity from Hydroelectric genertingstations did contribute to the return to (elctrical generating) service of the Bruce reactors, but not the restart of the reactors as indicated in the article.
http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=f8d0f592-a36f-4a9d-91e5-ce980415f8cd  Friday 22 July 2003

Is this the norm for this paper?  Anyone know who to direct comments on accuracy to?

Regards,
       Julian Ginniver