OPG — Darlington Nuclear

Darlington Nuclear Generating Station (DNGS) is a four-unit CANDU nuclear station in Clarington, Ontario, operated by Ontario Power Generation (OPG), the province's largest electricity producer. With a combined net capacity of 3,512 MWe, Darlington produces roughly 20% of Ontario's electricity and powers approximately two million homes.

I was assigned to the Minor Modifications (MMODs) team. Minor Modifications are small design changes to plant systems, structures, or components, processed through the Engineering Change Control (ECC) process. The internship encompassed three scopes of work: serving as the team's Single Point of Contact (SPOC), the designated representative interfacing with all external groups and stakeholders on behalf of the MMODs team; mechanical design work with the Plant Design group; and building the station's first centralized obsolescence tracking system.

The July 2020 to July 2021 window was one of the most significant periods in the station's history. All four reactor units were in different operational states simultaneously: one freshly back from a $12.8 billion refurbishment, one actively being disassembled, one setting the world record for continuous nuclear generation at 1,106 days, and one in normal operation. Every modification I coordinated had to be scheduled around this operational complexity.

The first five months were on-site at the Engineering Support & Services Building (ESSB) at DNGS, where I was classified as an essential worker at a nuclear facility during the COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2021, mandatory lockdown orders moved the team to full-time remote work for the remaining seven months.