It’s time to put Darlington Nuclear’s Unit 2 reactor back together, Ontario Power Generation announced Tuesday.
Refurbishment of the first of Darlington Nuclear’s four reactors began in October 2016. Since then, Unit 2 has been safely shut down and isolated from the operating station, defuelled and completely torn apart — disassembled — the Canadian company said.
The goal at this point, OPG said, is to rebuild the reactor to allow for 30 additional years of commercial operations.
The reassembly phase started with four days of calandria vessel inspection. During this phase of the process, a remotely controlled camera was installed to allow viewing of key areas, such as high-stress welds, reactivity mechanisms and moderator nozzles.
This work is followed by tube sheet bore cleaning and inspection, and inspection of the bellows.
Then, reactor rebuilding begins with installation of calandria tubes, fuel channel assemblies, and lower feeders. The entire project, involving 58 separate but interconnecting systems, is expected to take a year to complete.