TIVERTON-

A planned maintenance outage and inspection will put Bruce Power's Unit 5 out of service for about 90 days, the nuclear operator announced in a news release Monday.

The $135-million job. which started Friday, will help extend the life of the Bruce Power site, the company said in a news release.

Each reactor comes due for this type of service every two to 2 1/2 years, company spokesman John Peevers said in a phone interview.

During the maintenance and inspection program, thousands of tasks will be completed by Bruce Power staff, as well as hundreds of contractors who have been hired from across the province for their expertise in maintenance activities, Len Clewett, Bruce Powers chief nuclear officer, said in the release.

Our life-extension program and other site activities directly and indirectly create and sustain 22,000 jobs and inject about $4 billion annually into our local and provincial economies through the procurement of materials, hiring of skilled labour and investing of private dollars into publicly owned assets.

Cobalt-60, used to sterilize single-use medical devices including gloves, masks and stents, will be harvested from the reactor during the maintenance outage. It's also used to control mosquito populations as one way to control the Zika virus.

During the outage, High Specific Activity Cobalt will be loaded into Unit 5 and will be harvested in about two years for delivery to the company Nordion under an agreement. The material is used to treat brain-related cancers.

Peevers said Bruce Power has been doing as much work as it can to the reactors in advance of the major refurbishment of six reactors, beginning with Unit 6, in 2020. Some of the work underway now on Unit 5 is being done to that end.

In 2020, Unit 6's reactor will be refuelled, repiped and receive new steam generators. Each of the remaining reactors in turn will receive this extensive overhaul to their core components between 2020 and 2035. That overhaul is a $13-billion project. Units 1 and 2 were overhauled in an earlier refurbishment.

Bruce Power says it generates 30 per cent of Ontario's electricity at 30 per cent less than the average residential price. It was paid 6.6 cents per kilowatt-hour for its electricity in 2016, while the average residential price was about 11 cents per kw/h, the company's news release said.

Bruce Power employs 4,200 people.

Continue reading here:

Bruce Power invests millions in maintenance | The London Free Press - London Free Press