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SATURDAY, MAY 28 ONTARIO TODAY Test Rig For A-Plant Hand-picked engineers work in maze of pipes, platforms, valves BY WILLIAM RATTRAY IGNIFICANT and exhaustive experiments now underway on an impressive tomic test rig at Ontario Hydro's AW Manby Service Cen- tre at Islington are vitally related to plans for the building of Canada's first major nuclear-- electric power plant. When actual construction is started -- pos- sibly about 1961 -- this $60,000,000 station, named Douglas Point nuclear station, will be built on a 2,300-acre site on the shore of Lake Huron, nine miles north of Kincardine. On com- pletion, it will have a capacity of 200,000 kilo- watts. (The reactor in this station will be known as CANDU -- Canadian Deuterium Uranium). Under the direction of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (a Federal Government agency) a small, hand-picked staff of engineers is press- ing on with an exacting preliminary program, embracing a wide range of highly important tests. In addition to Atomic Energy of Canada and Ontario Hydro, official bodies in a number of other countries are represented, including the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, the Swedish State Power Board and the United 'States Atomic Energy Commission Co- operating closely in the tests are engineers re- presenting companies which specialize in the design and manufacture of equipment. ... The average layman might well be overawed on seeing the arresting rig on which these tests are being made. It occupies a space of some 30,000 square feet and reaches to a height of about 30 feet in one of the spacious buildings at Islington. Contrasting with the great lengths of the massive piping sheathed in tightly-wound, white-painted canvas, is a glistening and sym- metrical alignment of small-diameter pipes. This sweeping "criss-cross of conduits, along with elevated platforms and a commanding array of valves, instruments and heavy equipment, combine to capture the attention and interest of the bewildered layman. The rig actually comprises two test loops -- one for experiments relating to a horizontal reactor and the other for a vertical reactor. Each is basically a water-circulating system capable of being operated at the high tempera- tures and pressures encountered in nuclear re- actors. In making these tests ordinary water instead of heavy water can be, and is used. Bundles of "fuel" rods and tubes, .made to scale, are PAGE THREE Engineer checks level in flash tank, above; atomic test rig's control board seen upper left. substituted for uranium rods and Zircaloy tubes. There are 19 rods to a bundle in those now being studied and there is 50/1000 of an. inch of space between the rods or pencils when they are bundled. The first thing that is estab- lished is an "ideal flow" through the rods within the tube. Each bundle has small fins which are designed to direct the flow and to eliminate pockets of water gathering anywhere inside a tube. Such a pocket -- or water that does not keep flowing -- would cause excessive heat and considerable trouble. When a satisfactory flow has been establish- ed, the water is not only circulated at high pres- sure but it is heated electrically to a tempera- ture of 560 degrees. Joints in pipes, valves -- in fact any place where water might leak -- are carefully observed This is exceedingly im- portant for heavy water, which is used to draw heat away from uranium fuel rods, cost $28 a Ib. at today's prices, and many thousands of gallons will be required in a nuclear-electric plant like CANDU. The various components, such as joints and valves, on the test rig are the types which are being studied for use at the new: station. Various pieces of equipment, such as pumps, will be subjected also to the most rigorous kind of tests. Some of the tests are arranged to: represent the service expected during the life of the reactor.