Ontario’s building and construction trades are looking forward to decades of work on a $12 billion project for Bruce Power, which involves the refurbishment of six nuclear units at its facility on the shores of Lake Huron.
"If you look at projects around the province, you probably won’t see another project that will be this significant in terms of building trades activity sustained over a long period of time," said James Scongack, Bruce Power’s vice-president of corporate affairs.
"Over the next 20 years we will replace all the major components on units, and we will also be conducting a series of outages to continue to maintain, extend lifetime and monitor the units. The work will be sequenced so it is manageable, which is a combination of bringing work forward and appropriately spreading out the work."
The Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario have produced a study which investigates the economic impact of Bruce Power’s eight nuclear units on construction and the Ontario economy. The report was commissioned by the council in partnership with several organizations and released on Oct. 17, during its annual conference in Niagara Falls, Ont.
The study found that refurbishing six nuclear units at the Bruce Power facility will stabilize long-term power prices, create thousands of jobs, increase Ontario’s tax revenue and stimulate economic growth.
"For us it’s significant that the building trades can collectively recognize the importance of the nuclear industry in providing clean, affordable electricity, as well as its role in creating jobs," said Alex Lolua, general manager of the Electrical Power Systems Construction Association (EPSCA). "The nuclear industry is very important to the Ontario and Canadian economy."
The EPSCA negotiates and administers construction trade collective agreements for construction employers performing work for the Bulk Electrical System on Ontario Power Generation Inc., Bruce Power LP and Hydro One property.
Bruce Power plans will create 5,000 direct and indirect jobs and generate $960 million to $1.2 billion in labour income every year. The direct and indirect benefit through equipment, supplies and materials is estimated to be $735 million to $1.05 billion annually.
"The refurbishment involves the replacement of the major components that will extend the units life for another 30 or 35 years," said Scongack. "The major components include the reactor, the steam generator and the balance of the plant. The balance of the plant is the non-nuclear part of the site, such as the turbines and rotors."
Ontario’s long-term energy plan, released in December 2013, scheduled the start of construction in the next three to five years. The tentative start date is in 2017 and the work will be completed sometime in the early 2030s.
The plan estimates that the refurbishment of six nuclear units by Bruce Power and four more units at Darlington will cost about $20 billion.
There will be a wide range of trades involved in this project and Scongack estimates there will be about 1,000 to 1,500 trades on the site at any given time.
Jim Wodham, business manager of the Millwright Regional Council of Ontario (Local 1592), said the provincial building trades will be able to supply the skilled labour, as long as they are provided with adequate lead time."All of the building trades in this province have a number of training centres and we have the potential to train a lot of people in a very short period of time," said Wodham. "We also know there are a lot of young people out there that want to get into the trades. In southwest Ontario, there is not really a shortage of trades people, or people wanting to get into the trades. The problem is the opportunity for employment isn’t there for them."
Wodham said this project represents a great opportunity to train and employ millwrights, who install, maintain and repair industrial machinery and mechanical equipment.
He also points out that the millwrights were involved in a project that rebuilt Bruce Power’s Units 1 and 2 and returned them to the Ontario electricity grid in 2012, after the units were shut down in the 1990s.
"When we refurbished the Units 1 and 2, those units had been laid up for up to 20 years, so we were basically doing a complete overhaul of the unit," said Scongack. "We are in a situation now, where we clearly understand how our major units in the are operating. So, we don’t have to go in and do the same level of rehab as we did on Units 1 and 2."
Bruce Power also carried out a large life extension project on Unit 3, which was finished in 2012 at a cost of $300 million.
As a result of this experience, Bruce Power will apply the lessons learned from the previous project to the upcoming project.
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