Operation
The Douglas Point reactor first attained criticality on 15 November 1966 at 16:26 hours. It began feeding power into the grid on 7 January 1967 and officially entered service on 26 September 1968 with a 54% capacity factor.
The plant made its first on-power fuelling (i.e. refuelling the reactor without having to shut down) on 1 March 1970. This CANDU feature was first demonstrated by NPD on 23 November 1963.
Douglas Point suffered from early unreliability and heavy water leakage. The system was delicate and shut down frequently and easily; the plant was offline for more than half the time between 1968 and 1971. Repairs were expensive and time-consuming, and were made more difficult by the compact design that placed critical components in inaccessible locations. These engineering problems, including the vulnerability of the design to leaks in the primary coolant circuits are seen and discussed in an official 1968 documentary on the reactor. Repairs were done by remote control or large teams; the latter was done to reduce the time an individual employee was exposed to radiation.
Following the successful deployment of four larger 542 MWe reactors at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, the 220 MWe reactor was judged as inadequate. Plans to add another 220 MWe unit to Douglas Point were cancelled.
Read more about this topic: Douglas Point Nuclear Generating Station
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