Quality Improvement in Pickering Retubing/ Rehabilitation Outages

Abstract

Retubing of the Candu Reactor has progressed from single channel replacements in the 1970s through to large scale replacement programs in the 1980s and 1990s. Significant changes in the approach to the task have taken place in order to make the outage duration, dose uptake and costs viable. This was achieved by reducing radiation fields, designing shielding and planning to shorten the job on reactor. The organization and roles of the work groups involved (construction, operations and Design) were carefully designed to ensure a focused team approach to the outage. The work to be done during the outage is carefully detailed and logically planned. The outage itself involves many Operations activities to be completed before Construction begins it's work on the reactor. Once work begins all activities are monitored and controlled from the Retubing Control Centre. Removal of high radioactive components is done entirely by remotely controlled tools. Once the reactor is retubed a program of restarting and testing of systems to ensure operating license requirements is carried out.