Douglas Point Nuclear Generating Station

Douglas Point Nuclear Generating Station
Country	Canada
Location	Near Kincardine, Ontario
Coordinates	44°20′N 81°36′W / 44.333°N 81.6°W / 44.333; -81.6Coordinates: 44°20′N 81°36′W / 44.333°N 81.6°W / 44.333; -81.6
Status	Decommissioned
Commission date	1968
Decommission date	1984
Owner(s)	Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
Operator(s)	Ontario Hydro
Power generation information
Installed capacity	220 MW

The Douglas Point Nuclear Generating Station was Canada’s first full-scale nuclear power plant and the second CANDU Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor.

It was built and owned by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and operated by Ontario Hydro, the station was in service from 26 September 1968 to 5 May 1984. Douglas Point put Canada on the world nuclear power scene and its success was a milestone in Canadian development of nuclear power for peaceful purposes.

Decision to build

The successful Nuclear Power Demonstrator (NPD) was the first CANDU (CANada Deuterium Uranium) built. This was not a commercially economic unit and had been designed to illustrate the practicality of the CANDU system. Even before completion of the NPD, Canadian nuclear leaders were pushing for a full-scale power reactor.

In 1958, the Nuclear Power Plant Division of AECL was set up in Toronto, at Ontario Hydro’s A.W. Manby Service Centre in Toronto. The decision to proceed with a 200 MWe commercial prototype reactor was formally taken in 1959. On 18 June 1959, Gordon Churchill, the Conservative Minister of Trade and Commerce, announced the construction of Canada’s first full-scale nuclear power station, to be located at Douglas Point.

Site selection

Choosing the site for Ontario’s first reactor designed for commercial use involved a long process of elimination. A site along the Great Lakes system was decided, and points along the shoreline north of Manitoulin Island, and from Tobermory all the way to Goderich were in the running. Over time, the future site was limited to the stretch between Goderich and Southampton. By the end of June 1959, low-lying Douglas Point, 16 km (ten miles) north of Kincardine, had attracted significant attention. The site’s solid limestone base was ideal. Hydro Electric Power Commission acquired 9.31 square kilometres (2,301 acres) of land at the site on 24 June 1959 for the cost of $50 to $70 an acre, the going price of farm land at the time.

In 1961 Douglas Point set up an information office and a Bailey bridge at tree-top level providing a view of the site.

Construction

The Douglas Point site was cleared and excavated by Hydro construction crews sent out from Toronto, as well as by locally and provincially hired labour—a workforce numbering approximately 500. Six hundred Canadian firms, as well as manufacturers in the United Kingdom and the United States received contracts for Douglas Point. Eventually, 71% of Douglas Point’s components were supplied by Canadian manufacturers, the remainder supplied by British and American manufacturers.

Douglas Point’s heavy-water moderator was contained in a tubed vessel called the calandria. The stainless steel 54.4 tonne (60 ton) calandria, 6.1 metres (20 ft) in diameter, was made by Dominion Bridge in Montreal and shipped by barge to Kincardine from Lachine (on the southwest of the island of Montreal). The calandria arrived by float, and was delivered to the Douglas Point site by flat-bed truck

In May 1964, work began on transmission lines linking Douglas Point to the provincial power grid near Hanover. All the major equipment was installed by 1965.

In operation

Operators brought the Douglas Point reactor to ‘first critical’ on 15 November 1966 at 16:26 hours. On the Tuesday afternoon, engineers induced a low stage of criticality in the plant’s reactor. Criticality is a sustained reaction of atom splitting, caused by uranium fuel being placed in the 306 pressure tubes contained within the reactor.

Douglas Point’s power first entered the grid on 7 January 1967. Douglas Point was declared in-service just over a year and a half later, on 26 September 1968, with an electrical output of 220 000 kilowatts (or 220 MWe) and built at a cost of $91 million.

On-power fuelling was achieved for the first time at Douglas Point on 1 March 1970 highlighting the CANDU ability to fuel the reactor without having to shut the reactor down. On-power refuelling had been first achieved at NPD on 23 November 1963.

Originally, the site was planned to be a two-unit station. The success of four larger 542 MWe Pickering ‘A’ reactors meant that a second 220 MWe unit at Douglas Point was not constructed because it would already be regarded as too small.

Douglas Point attracted criticism in the beginning as repairs were costly in both finances and time and more than half of the time between 1968 and 1971, the generating station was ‘down.’ The system was delicate, shutting down frequently and easily. Repairs were done by remote control or large teams, as each employee could only have a limited radiation dose. Valves and pumps were difficult to reach and the system design was compact, making repair and maintenance difficult as critical components were situated in compact and inaccessible locations. This was generally due to attempts to conserve heavy water in systems. Heavy water was extremely expensive: $26 per pound, at a station which would need tons. Therefore, the design was to save every possible ounce of heavy water. The site was costly in the early stages as Douglas Point leaked extraordinary amounts of heavy water.

Douglas Point had an oil-filled window which allowed direct observation of the East reactor face, even during full-power operation.^[1]

RAPP

Douglas Point put Canada in the export field internationally, when a duplicate station at Rajasthan, India was committed in 1963. The Rajasthan Power Project (RAPP) included two 220 MWe CANDU reactors built in the state of Rajasthan and put into service, respectively, in 1973 and 1981. Indian tradesmen and professional engineers came to be trained at Douglas Point. After the nuclear bomb test explosion in 1973 the nuclear trade links between Canada and India were curtailed and the second RAPP reactor was completed by the Indians with no Canadian assistance.

Shutdown

On 5 May 1984 Douglas Point went offline, despite the improvement in capacity factor, from 54% at its in-service date, to 75% in 1982, and in 1984—before retirement—82%. Ontario Hydro, as agreed, had operated the plant but—highlighting the site’s challenges as an operational power reactor—refused to buy it from AECL. As Ontario Hydro was not to purchase the site, AECL would no longer finance the operation and the station was too expensive to upscale.

Station Manager Don Milley: “Yes, there is a lot of sentiment. Some people do feel emotional about it—like losing an old friend. Many people worked hard and are hard hit by it. It was a tough job to get it running well and it has been running very well.” ^[2] Many employees were disappointed; others shocked, angered and betrayed. John Foster summarized: “I think you always feel something because you put so much into it …. It was the thing that the team cut their teeth on and Pickering and Bruce have benefited. But it’s only a machine, remember, and it has done its job.” ^[3]

After 17 years, however, the generating station had produced valuable experience in the construction and operations of CANDU reactors and served as a teaching tool for the emerging nuclear industry. Ernie Siddall recalled: “All sorts of lessons were learned by all sorts of people. The reason Pickering ‘A’ worked so well is that the right people got their hands dirty at Douglas Point and learned the right lessons …. There were dozens of things that we learned.” ^[4]

Douglas Point was home to Canada’s first medium-sized CANDU (220 MWe) reactor, as NPD was strictly a pilot project and it was Douglas Point to put Canada into the world nuclear power scene along with the United Kingdom and the United States. Douglas Point was the first designed in Canada for commercial use. Success at Douglas Point was a milestone, demonstrating in a commercial reactor the successful application of heavy water—natural uranium method and that on-power fuelling could be achieved, as well as the joint development of a major project by the joint cooperation of the federal government, a public utility and a private enterprise (Canadian General Electric, Ontario Hydro and AECL).

Douglas Point is now contained within the Bruce Power site, the licensed operator for Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, yet the station building and remaining equipment are still owned by AECL.

See also

• List of Canadian nuclear facilities

References

1. ^ Douglas Point on the Canadian Nuclear Society website
2. ^ Douglas Point on the Canadian Nuclear Society website
3. ^ Douglas Point on the Canadian Nuclear Society website
4. ^ Douglas Point on the Canadian Nuclear Society website

Bothwell R. Nucleus: The History of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. University of Toronto Press, 1988