By: Donald Jones, retired nuclear industry engineer, 2019 April 21
History
The two lead CANDU 6 projects were Gentilly 2 in Quebec and Point Lepreau in New Brunswick and these were quickly followed by Embalse in Argentina and Wolsong, now Wolsong 1, in South Korea and all came into service in the early to mid 1980s. These can be regarded as the first tranche of CANDU 6 build.
The second tranche of CANDU 6 units came with Wolsong 2, 3 and 4 in South Korea, Cernavoda 1 and 2 in Romania, and Qinshan 3-1 and 3-2 in China (the other units at Qinshan site are not CANDU), all entering service between 1996 to 2007. Each of the second tranche CANDU 6 units incorporate lessons learned from operation of the earlier units with changes to meet latest regulatory codes and standards.
Capacity Factor
The Capacity Factors are taken from the PRIS (Power Reactor Information System) database of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency). Note that the Load Factor term used in the PRIS database has the same meaning as Capacity Factor (CF). Capacity Factors are based on the (net) Reference Unit Power and on the (net) Electricity Supplied figures, as defined in the PRIS database. The Energy Availability Factor (EAF) is another performance indicator and is shown in the PRIS database. The EAF adjusts the available energy generation for energy losses attributed to plant management, planned and unplanned, and for external energy losses beyond the control of plant management. The Unit Capability Factor (UCF), another performance metric, only includes energy losses attributed to plant management and excludes the external losses beyond control of plant management like load cycling/load following, grid failures, earthquakes, cooling water temperature higher than reference temperature, floods, lightning strikes, labour disputes outside the plant etc. The UCF seems a much better indicator of how well the unit is being managed than either CF or EAF but it is not specifically identified in the PRIS database (reference 1). Note that Bruce Power and Ontario Power Generation use UCF as a performance indicator.
CANDU 6 Units
Point Lepreau, New Brunswick, Canada. At the end of 2018 the lifetime CF since start of commercial operation in 1983 was 70.9 percent, including the refurbishment outage, and the annual CF for 2018 was 84.6 percent (EAF 84.5 percent). Read the rest of this entry »