Centrale nucléaire de Pickering

Pickering Nuclear Generating Station is a Canadian nuclear power station located on the north shore of Lake Ontario in Pickering, Ontario. It is one of the oldest nuclear power stations in the world and Canada's third-largest, with eight CANDU reactors. Since 2003, two of these units have been defueled and deactivated. The remaining six produce about 16% of Ontario's power and employ 3,000 workers. A single 1.8 MWe wind turbine, named the OPG 7 commemorative turbine, was installed on the site of the generating station until October 2019, when it was dismantled. The reactors can be classified as follows: PICKERING A PICKERING A 1 PICKERING A 2 (Safe Shutdown state, defuelled) PICKERING A 3 (Safe Shutdown state, defuelled) PICKERING A 4 PICKERING B PICKERING B 5 PICKERING B 6 PICKERING B 7 PICKERING B 8 The site was once Squires Beach located west of Duffins Creek. The facility was constructed in stages between 1965 and 1986 by the provincial Crown corporation, Ontario Hydro, with significant completion of Station A scheduled for 1971. In April 1999, Ontario Hydro was split into five component Crown corporations with Ontario Power Generation (OPG) taking over all electricity generating stations. OPG continues to operate the Pickering station. The Pickering station is a large multi-unit nuclear facility, comprising six operating CANDU nuclear reactors with a total output of 3,114 MW when all units are on line, and two non-operating units with a total output of 1,030 MW currently shut down in safe storage. The facility is connected to the North American power grid via numerous 230 kV and 500 kV transmission lines. The facility was operated as two distinct stations, Pickering A (Units 1 to 4) and Pickering B (Units 5 to 8) until 2011. While primarily administrative in nature, the division was not wholly artificial, as there are some distinct differences in design between the two groups of stations. (Example: The Pickering A units employ a moderator dump as a shutdown mechanism, a feature not found in Pickering B, which instead uses what is called an over-poisoned reaction guaranteed shutdown.