Pickering Station, located roughly 30 kilometres northeast of downtown Toronto, employs about 3,000 people and until recently supplied about 11 per cent of Ontario’s electricity
Canada ’s nuclear safety regulator again extended a crucial permit for the country’s oldest nuclear power plant on Friday, allowing it to continue operating beyond its original design life.
Canada’s homegrown reactor, the CANDU, was originally assigned a design life of 30 years, which had been incorporated into CNSC licensing requirements. If followed, they would have dictated that all four reactors shut down for major overhauls or decommissioning years ago. The CNSC, though, amended those rules and extended the station’s licence three times, while imposing more thorough inspection requirements on key components. The Pickering B reactors are now around 40 years old.
Pressure tubes, which are six-metre-long rods that contain fuel bundles of uranium, are regarded as the major life-limiting component in CANDUs. They deteriorate as they age, gradually increasing their propensity to fracture, an event which could lead to a serious accident. Pressure tubes and related components are collectively known as fuel channels.
But in recent years a small number of pressure tubes in Canada have been found to have greatly exceeded that limit. The CNSC removed the 120 ppm limit from Pickering Station’s licence on Friday, and introduced a new requirement that OPG “implement and maintain an enhanced fitness for service program” for its fuel channels.
“Old nuclear plants are particularly susceptible to accidents,” it wrote in its submission, adding that the dangers of allowing the plant to continue operating are “high and increasing.”
Cnsc Opg Pickering Reactor Permit Canada Licence Ontario Toronto Canada
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