Construction
The facility was constructed in stages between 1966 and 1986 by the provincial Crown corporation, Ontario Hydro. In April 1999, Ontario Hydro was split into five component Crown corporations with Ontario Power Generation (OPG) taking over all electrical generating stations and which continues to operate the Pickering station.
The Pickering station is one of the largest nuclear facilities in the world and comprises eight CANDU nuclear reactors located on the northern shore of Lake Ontario, having a total output of 4124 MW (capacity net) and 4336 MW (gross net) when all units are on line. Pickering is only surpassed in Canada by the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, which while also having 8 reactors, has a greater output. The facility is connected to the North American power grid via numerous 230,000 and 500,000-volt 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 moderator dump as a shutdown mechanism, a feature not found in Pickering B.) There are, however, a number of systems and structures in common between the two stations; the most notable of these is possibly the shared vacuum building, a negative pressure containment system. The operation of Pickering A and B is being unified in order to reduce costs now that Pickering Units 2 and 3 are shut down in safe storage.
Read more about this topic: Pickering Nuclear Generating Station
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