Design
The first CANDU was a demonstration unit, the Nuclear Power Demonstrator (NPD). In 1958, before NPD was complete, AECL formed the Nuclear Power Plant Division at Ontario Hydro’s A.W. Manby Service Centre in Toronto to manage the construction of a full-scale prototype for future CANDU commercial power plants. Ontario Hydro would operate the prototype.
The plant would have a 200 MWe reactor and be built in Ontario. The reactor's stainless steel calandria would mass 54.4 tonne (60 ton) and had have a 6.1 metres (20 ft) diameter. The design was compact to reduce the required amount of heavy water moderator; the reactor required several tons of heavy water, which was very expensive at $26 per pound.
Sites along Lake Huron on the shoreline north of Manitoulin Island and along the shoreline from Tobermory to Goderich were considered. Low-lying Douglas Point, within the latter area, was chosen by the end of June 1959; its solid limestone base made it ideal. The Hydro Electric Power Commission acquired a 9.31 square kilometres (2,301 acres) area at the site for $50 to $70 an acre, the going price of farm land at the time.
Gordon Churchill, the Minister of Trade and Commerce, officially announced the decision to build the plant at Douglas Point on 18 June 1959.
Read more about this topic: Douglas Point Nuclear Generating Station
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)