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Canada’s workhorse nuclear research reactor, the NRU at Chalk River, is to be shuttered in 2018 after a 60-year run of pioneering scientific innovation and, more recently, serious age-related breakdowns, safety concerns and political controversy.
Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford quietly announced the closure more than a month ago, in a press release heralding a two-year extension of medical isotope production at NRU until March 31, 2018. The release went on to artfully note that the venerable reactor’s “decommissioning” will begin on that date, too.
The permanent shutdown of the world’s oldest operating nuclear reactor raises many questions, including the impact on Canada’s nuclear energy sector.
A report last year by the Public Policy Forum, based on a consensus of close to 100 nuclear experts, said that without a strong nuclear research and development capacity, led by National Research Universal (NRU), it will be difficult for Canada to maintain a strong nuclear sector.
Rickford’s office Monday did not immediately respond.
It’s also unclear what impact the closure might have on the final stage of the Conservative government’s plan to reorganize Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), the Crown corporation that owns the newly named Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) at Chalk River.
AECL’s CANDU reactor division was sold in 2011 to Candu Energy Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of SNC Lavalin Group.
The government has said it hopes to turn the remaining research and technology division at Chalk River into a government-owned contractor-operated (GoCo) partnership that would be completed this year. The government says the move is intended to introduce private-sector rigour to reduce taxpayers’ liability and to refocus the mission at Canada’s largest scientific establishment, employing about 3,000 people. NRU is a major part of the operation.
The Chalk River Professional Employees Group, part of the Professional Institute for the Public Service, says most of its 700 members at Chalk River have jobs related to the NRU. Two locals of United Steelworkers of America represent hundreds more.
There has been no word on what stage the “Go-Co” process is at.
While potential private partners have always known the government intended to halt the NRU’s medical isotope production in 2016 – and now 2018 – many had hoped that NRU would continue operation for important neutron physics research, engineering research and development.
The reactor is the cornerstone of AECL’s historic laboratories at Chalk River, 190 kilometres northwest of Ottawa and the site of Canada’s largest scientific establishment. Canadian physicist Bertram Brockhouse won the 1994 Nobel Prize in physics for his seminal work at NRU using neutron scattering to explore materials.
The Canadian Neutron Beam Centre uses NRU to understand the properties of materials on an atomic scale. The resulting knowledge is used for everything from chemistry, food science and health care to industrial design safety.
Several expensive and high-profile breakdowns in recent years have fuelled speculation about the reactor’s long-term viability and safety. AECL has countered that NRU is safe to operate until at least 2021. But its fate under the reorganization hinged on whether a strong business case could be made to justify continued investment to keep it operating.
Against the backdrop of Japan’s Fukushima reactor disaster in 2011, doubts about its future surfaced again last year, when then-Natural Resources minister Joe Oliver confirmed to the Citizen that one option under AECL’s reorganization was to shutter the NRU.
The reactor’s fate rested on it delivering innovative scientific and economic benefits once medical isotope production ceases in 2016, Robert Walker, the head of AECL said in a separate interview.
“These are difficult policy decisions,” said Walker. “There’s a benefit and there’s a cost. That’s what government really wants to take a look at. And with that, they’ll be giving us direction on its wishes with the NRU.”
A crucial consideration was the operational health of the reactor, which sprang a heavy-water leak in 2009 that led to a 15-month, $70-million shutdown and a global shortage of medical isotopes. It followed another emergency safety shutdown in 2007.
Parliament legislated the reactor to resume operation and soon after fired Linda Keen, then president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, who had ordered the safety shutdown. Keen was dismissed hours before she was scheduled to appear before a parliamentary committee investigating the reactor’s safety.
The Harper government directly blamed Keen for unnecessarily closing the reactor and the resulting domestic shortage of life-saving medical isotopes for cancer and cardiac diagnosis and other treatment.
Meanwhile, the government has said nothing about a new reactor to replace the NRU, which would take a least a decade and likely more than $1 billion to design and build.
Government reluctance to construct a replacement reactor is understandable.
The MAPLE 1 and MAPLE 2 reactors – aka Multipurpose Applied Physics Lattice Experiment – were intended to replace isotope production at NRU reactor as well as the NRX reactor, closed in 1992. Construction was completed in 2000. But the MAPLEs were plagued with technical problems, including an insurmountable design flaw. After years of unsuccessful trouble-shooting, this prevented the MAPLEs from achieving commercial operation.
AECL finally pulled the plug in May 2008. It estimated the cost to get the reactors operating properly would total at least $1 billion, including more than $600 million already spent by taxpayers and Ottawa’s Nordion, formerly MDS Inc.
The virgin MAPLEs sit idle at the site today.
imacleod@ottawacitizen.com
Twitter.com/macleod_ian
查看原文...
Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford quietly announced the closure more than a month ago, in a press release heralding a two-year extension of medical isotope production at NRU until March 31, 2018. The release went on to artfully note that the venerable reactor’s “decommissioning” will begin on that date, too.
The permanent shutdown of the world’s oldest operating nuclear reactor raises many questions, including the impact on Canada’s nuclear energy sector.
A report last year by the Public Policy Forum, based on a consensus of close to 100 nuclear experts, said that without a strong nuclear research and development capacity, led by National Research Universal (NRU), it will be difficult for Canada to maintain a strong nuclear sector.
Rickford’s office Monday did not immediately respond.
It’s also unclear what impact the closure might have on the final stage of the Conservative government’s plan to reorganize Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), the Crown corporation that owns the newly named Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) at Chalk River.
AECL’s CANDU reactor division was sold in 2011 to Candu Energy Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of SNC Lavalin Group.
The government has said it hopes to turn the remaining research and technology division at Chalk River into a government-owned contractor-operated (GoCo) partnership that would be completed this year. The government says the move is intended to introduce private-sector rigour to reduce taxpayers’ liability and to refocus the mission at Canada’s largest scientific establishment, employing about 3,000 people. NRU is a major part of the operation.
The Chalk River Professional Employees Group, part of the Professional Institute for the Public Service, says most of its 700 members at Chalk River have jobs related to the NRU. Two locals of United Steelworkers of America represent hundreds more.
There has been no word on what stage the “Go-Co” process is at.
While potential private partners have always known the government intended to halt the NRU’s medical isotope production in 2016 – and now 2018 – many had hoped that NRU would continue operation for important neutron physics research, engineering research and development.
The reactor is the cornerstone of AECL’s historic laboratories at Chalk River, 190 kilometres northwest of Ottawa and the site of Canada’s largest scientific establishment. Canadian physicist Bertram Brockhouse won the 1994 Nobel Prize in physics for his seminal work at NRU using neutron scattering to explore materials.
The Canadian Neutron Beam Centre uses NRU to understand the properties of materials on an atomic scale. The resulting knowledge is used for everything from chemistry, food science and health care to industrial design safety.
Several expensive and high-profile breakdowns in recent years have fuelled speculation about the reactor’s long-term viability and safety. AECL has countered that NRU is safe to operate until at least 2021. But its fate under the reorganization hinged on whether a strong business case could be made to justify continued investment to keep it operating.
Against the backdrop of Japan’s Fukushima reactor disaster in 2011, doubts about its future surfaced again last year, when then-Natural Resources minister Joe Oliver confirmed to the Citizen that one option under AECL’s reorganization was to shutter the NRU.
The reactor’s fate rested on it delivering innovative scientific and economic benefits once medical isotope production ceases in 2016, Robert Walker, the head of AECL said in a separate interview.
“These are difficult policy decisions,” said Walker. “There’s a benefit and there’s a cost. That’s what government really wants to take a look at. And with that, they’ll be giving us direction on its wishes with the NRU.”
A crucial consideration was the operational health of the reactor, which sprang a heavy-water leak in 2009 that led to a 15-month, $70-million shutdown and a global shortage of medical isotopes. It followed another emergency safety shutdown in 2007.
Parliament legislated the reactor to resume operation and soon after fired Linda Keen, then president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, who had ordered the safety shutdown. Keen was dismissed hours before she was scheduled to appear before a parliamentary committee investigating the reactor’s safety.
The Harper government directly blamed Keen for unnecessarily closing the reactor and the resulting domestic shortage of life-saving medical isotopes for cancer and cardiac diagnosis and other treatment.
Meanwhile, the government has said nothing about a new reactor to replace the NRU, which would take a least a decade and likely more than $1 billion to design and build.
Government reluctance to construct a replacement reactor is understandable.
The MAPLE 1 and MAPLE 2 reactors – aka Multipurpose Applied Physics Lattice Experiment – were intended to replace isotope production at NRU reactor as well as the NRX reactor, closed in 1992. Construction was completed in 2000. But the MAPLEs were plagued with technical problems, including an insurmountable design flaw. After years of unsuccessful trouble-shooting, this prevented the MAPLEs from achieving commercial operation.
AECL finally pulled the plug in May 2008. It estimated the cost to get the reactors operating properly would total at least $1 billion, including more than $600 million already spent by taxpayers and Ottawa’s Nordion, formerly MDS Inc.
The virgin MAPLEs sit idle at the site today.
imacleod@ottawacitizen.com
Twitter.com/macleod_ian
查看原文...
