Candu Energy, a subsidiary of the Canadian EPC services company SNC-Lavalin Group, has secured contracts worth $36m (£28.8m) from Bruce Power from 1 January 2019 till 31 April 2019, to support its operational objectives.

Under the contract, the company is responsible to provide support to the Bruce Reactor Inspection and Maintenance System (BRIMS) program, with the maintenance and operation of the Advanced Non-Destructive Examination (ANDE)/replication maintenance tool and the Modal Detection and Repositioning (MODAR) tool for fuel channel spacer repositioning.

The work was awarded under a Master Services Agreement signed with Bruce in 2016

The contracts, which are awarded under a Master Services Agreement signed in 2016, include initiatives to reduce maintenance outage duration and increase output from the reactor at Unit 4 at the facility.

SNC-Lavalin nuclear executive vice-president Bill Fox said: “Employees at SNC-Lavalin continue to explore and introduce innovation to Bruce Power’s Life-Extension Program that provides efficiencies and value to the job.

“We remain committed to making investments to grow our team and explore new technologies to support ongoing plant operations as well as the Major Component Replacement Project.”

In addition, the contracts include a new initiative to deploy SNC-Lavalin’s CANDUclean System to remove the oxide deposits from all accessible U-tubes in the preheaters of Unit 4 to improve output.

Candu said that the BRIMS work is aimed at innovating time-saving technologies that contribute to the reducing of outage duration.

The application of CANDUclean technology is the result of a collaborative effort between Bruce Power and SNC-Lavalin.

Bruce Power president and CEO Mike Rencheck said: “Increasing our output and operating the Bruce Power site to 2064 by innovating and extending the life of our units will create and sustain 22,000 direct and indirect jobs annually, while injecting $4 billion into Ontario’s economy each year for decades.

“By working together with our partners to find efficiencies we will continue to power more for less in support of Ontario families and businesses.”

The company said that the CANDUclean system has been successfully deployed at CANDU nuclear power plants since the early 1990’s, to eliminate magnetite deposits from the steam generator tubes.