14 Aug (NucNet): The operating licence of the Pickering nuclear generating station in Ontario has been renewed for five years, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) has said.
The licence will be valid from 1 September 2013 until 31 August 2018.
The licence includes a regulatory condition that will limit the operation of Pickering B nuclear station to 210,000 effective full power hours. The CNSC will consider the removal of this condition in a future public hearing process.
Ontario Power Generation (OPG), the plant’s operator, will have to submit a revised probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) for Pickering A which meets the CNSC regulatory standards of level-2 PSAs, an updated PSA for both Pickering A and B that takes into account the enhancements required under the CNSC Fukushima Action Plan, and a whole-site PSA or methodology for a whole-site PSA specific to the Pickering plant.
The CSNC further directed OPG to produce a public information document, which summarises the integrated emergency response plan of all involved organisations. The document is to be distributed to all households in the Pickering area and should be ready by the end of 2014.
Pickering nuclear power plant has six commercially operational and two permanently shut down nuclear units. They are all pressurized heavy water reactors of the Candu 500 type.
Pickering A has of four reactors (Pickering-1, -2, -3 and -4), two of which are permanently shut down (units 2 and 3). Pickering B has four commercially operational reactors (Pickering-5, -6, -7, and -8).
The two stations occupy the same location and their division is primarily administrative in nature. After the shutdown of Pickering A units 2 and 3, it was decided to unify the two stations to reduce operation costs.
Canada has 19 commercially operational and six permanently shut down nuclear units.
Canada produced 15 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy in 2012.
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To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lubomir Mitev at lubomir.mitev@nucnet.org
