The first plant was Bruce A. It's funny I could never get much out of anybody on how that went. It was like asking someone what it was like in the trenches of WWI. They had to dig out a tunnel for the water intake, and I got the impression it was horrible. I had direct knowledge of the Bruce B tunnel and that was horrible. Nobody got killed in either case.
You inject the sponge full of grout until it is workable and you can excavate in it, and pour foundations. You don't ask about the safety factor. I always get the impression that it is all on a huge egg shell. It has held for now, and that's good enough for a cowboy.
Bruce B was a larger plant, built with the experience of the A plants. It was always a matter of bumping up the heavy water flow to get a higher power density. I've written about that enough times. It was very 'handy man-ish'. The big problem was again the tunnel. This time it had to be larger and go out farther, a problem with sponge rock.
Again, trainloads of grout went into it. This time, however, they encountered a cathedral rock cavern right ahead of them. Not enough trains to fill that thing, so they backed off and went around it. A whale of a tale. Forgotten in history.
Needless to say, the concept of Bruce C was off everyone's table when we were looking for new sites. I was going to blow some money to use Lidar to map the lake bottom to find the outcrop of the Grenville Front, but that died in the Big Purge.
I also said 'Fat chance in heel' when they were looking for a site for the ITER fusion test bed. That went to France, and they can have it.
--End
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