Refurbishment work ahead of schedule at Darlington power station

Some of the work to refurbish the reactors at the Darlington Nuclear Power Station in Bowmanville has finished ahead of schedule.

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) said they’ve successfully reconnected reactor number three to Ontario’s electricity grid, 169 days earlier than expected.

It’s part of an ongoing project at the station to refurbish all four reactors on site, costing over $12 billion.

OPG Senior Vice President of Nuclear Refurbishment, Subo Sinnathamby, is crediting the early completion to both the planning process and learning from the refurbishments of both reactor two, and from other operators who’ve completed similar work in other locations.

“The culture on the project where all the vendor partners and OPG are very committed to a single goal of achieving Unit 3 return to service and the rest of the project to ensure we return all four units back to Ontario’s grid on schedule and on budget,” said Sinnathamby

Reactor unit number 3 is the second unit to undergo complete restoration work at Darlington. Meanwhile, Unit 1 is expected to be completed in mid-2025 with 60 per cent of it complete already.

With the refurbishment, the units are expected to have another 30 years of life left.

“The expectation for a CANDU design is that we would have mid-life refurbishment and so that’s what this is and it’s going to give us another 30 years of additional clean energy,” said Sinnathamby.

Unit 4, however, will come offline shortly so work can begin. Officials here saying this plant alone supplies 20% of Ontario’s power. Unit 3 produces enough electricity to power 350,000 homes for an entire year.

Sinnathamby said this work is extremely important for the future of nuclear energy in the province. “If you look at the latest forecasts that’s come from Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), we are expecting the demands for electricity to expand significantly over the next 20 years and so hence why the refurbishment of Darlington … is a part of the mix that needs to be there, for us to meet electricity demands in the 2040s and 2050s as electrification rises,” said Sinnathamby.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Energy said the project finishing ahead of schedule will “will help power the next major international investment in Ontario, the new homes we are building, and industries as they grow and electrify.”