Durham Chapter Exhibits During OPG Open House

By: Matt Mairinger

NAYGN Durham was eager to participate when our chapter was invited to be an exhibitor on Friday November 17^th for “Student day & trades indigenous careers open house” and on Saturday November 18^th for “Darlington refurbishment open house”. On Friday, over 200 grade 9 students had the opportunity to learn more about the skilled trade opportunities available in the nuclear field, access the OPG nuclear reactor mock-up, and have a bus tour of the Darlington nuclear power station. Many stopped by the NAYGN Durham booth and left with a better understanding of nuclear power and with a realization that there is a non-profit group, NAYGN, trying to advocate for nuclear power to secure the well paying green-energy careers for them. On Saturday, over 1800 members of the public stopped by to get informed about nuclear power and had the chance to see Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG) one-of-a-kind full scale CANadian Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) reactor mock-up up close. This mock-up was built to provide the refurbishment employees an opportunity to train and practice job tasks in a clean environment to ensure that when the work was performed in the field it could be performed safer and more efficiently. Quite a few stopped by the NAYGN Durham booth and were particularly interested in Marie’s Electric Adventure – a children’s book about a young girl, Marie, and her dog, Einstein, on a journey to discover where the power comes from. To find out more about NAYGN Durham events check out our website www.naygndurham.com which will be launched this week or send an email to naygndurham@opg.com.

Surayya Vohra (NAYGN Durham Membership & Networking lead), Andrew Ali (NAYGN Canada regional lead) and Matthew Mairinger (NAYGN Durham president) at the booth

OPG mock-up reactor at the Darlington Energy Complex