At one of the largest nuclear facilities in the world located in southwestern Ontario, Canada, they have eight generating units produce over 6000 MW electricity. The first units have been operational since 1976. Facility maintenance is critical to the long-term operation of the generating station.

Maintaining effective lighting around the boiler posed a significant challenge:

• Temperature and vibration conditions around the boiler shorten the life of conventional industrial lighting.
• Lights that fail during unit operation often cannot be replaced until a unit shutdown.
• Ineffective lighting reduces operational safety.
• Lamp replacement (re-lamping) impacts maintenance costs.

The Boiler Inspection & Maintenance Group at nuclear facility launched a Boiler Light Improvement Project. The goal was to find a replacement light source with the following characteristics:

• High-quality light
• Operational in high-temperature locations
• Vibration resistant
• Long life
• Contribute to maintenance improvement at the plant

Nemalux’s proven experience with industrial LED lighting was a good match for the requirements.  The alternatives for the lighting were as follows:

• Conventional industrial lighting tolerates temperature and vibration to various degrees depending on the technology used. However, this type of lamping must be replaced well before the lamps have reached their lifespan. Re-lamping for conventional industrial lighting is scheduled during an outage because lighting around the boiler is inaccessible during operation. This adds to maintenance costs.
• LED lighting has the advantage of solid state technology and compact form. LED technology produces high-quality light that can be engineered to provide specific spectrums of light and light intensity. Due to its solid state design, LED’s are inherently less susceptible to vibration than the other lighting alternatives and can easily be housed in a ruggedized fixture.