This is the part my brain AI can write because it just history and no thinking. The beginning of nuclear power in Ontario was 'cowboy engineering'. Now the lefties think that is bad, but it is better than 'influencer/lawyer engineering' because it got things built. Now, we can't build anything.
I wasn't there, but I met a lot of old people when I first came to the old company, and I have some clue. These were nicely weird people who started with the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway, after the war. They were true cowboys, not giving a poop about anything that got in there way.
The Bruce site had Douglas Point, the first commercial reactor, and the Heavy Water Plant. DP was such a dim bulb that it probably just powered the hw plant. That was amazing stuff, pioneered by Norway and the Nasties. There were huge towers to separate heavy-H and stuffed full of hydrogen sulfide, the rotten egg gas that would turn you into a rotten egg. Working at the site meant always having a gas mask near you, in case the siren went off.
Bruce was a perfectly flat site, sticking out from the shore of the lake. It got that way through geology. It was the damaged hanging wall of the Grenville Front, one of the many huge ancient fault zones zooming across Ontario. They are so old, they only get activated by increasing water pressure, as experienced at the end of Lake Ontario. However, at any time, they can shoot off an earthquake.
The limestone rock of Bruce is as porous as sponge cake. It didn't matter to the cowboys, it was flat and near water. They started digging for Bruce A, and had a train dedicated to shipping up grout powder from cement plants. Who knows how much went into that rock.
-to be continued.
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