Turbine control system upgrade for Bruce Nuclear plant units 1 and 2

The Bruce nuclear power plant commissioned in 1976 incorporated old technology in its analog turbine electro hydraulic control system (EHC), which is being upgraded to a state of the art distributed control system. The project is undertaken under the scope of Bruce A Restart project. The Bruce site consist of Bruce A and Bruce B plants, each has 4 Nuclear units rated at approximately 800 MW. The old analog system controls the Parsons steam turbine, interfaces with the main steam valves and controls the turbine speed and load. The new distributed control system (DCS), supplied by Siemens, utilizes remote main control processors and local valve control processors. To minimize signal losses and noise, a local panel was located on the turbine deck and all signals were run to the remote control equipment room panel via redundant fibre optics. The DCS incorporates a human machine interface (HMI) monitoring and control panel. Control is originated at the main control room (MCR) via manual operation or automatic control via the plant computer, valve testing and monitoring functions only are accomplished at the HMI station.. Unlike building a new plant, the design is based on reverse engineering, mitigation of existing troubles, utilization of cutting edge technology, and accommodating new requirements. An in depth customer involvement was required throughout the entire engineering process for success of the project. Most importantly in the conceptual design phase, a specification was developed with customer input. This approach resulted in the successful completion of the verification and validation during the factory acceptance test (FAT) with minimal pit falls and rework.