A fire broke out on New Year's Day in the turbine hall of the Pickering nuclear plant, Ontario Power Generation recently told Canadian media.
On Friday, the Pickering News Advertiser quoted an OPG spokesman as saying the fire started at about 9 p.m. in a lube oil purification system at unit 1, which was offline for maintenance. The plant's firefighters and sprinkler system extinguished the fire, which did not affect the plant's other reactors. Its cause is under investigation by OPG, and the utility informed the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission of the incident.
Pickering hosts eight Candu heavy water reactors, six of which are in operation. According to OPG, unit 1 entered service in 1971, was mothballed in 1997 and then returned to service in 2005. The operating units at the plant on Lake Ontario near Toronto have a combined generating capacity of 3,100 megawatts.