Chalk River shutdown end of an era

500 jobs at stake as plug being pulled on pioneering NRU reactor in 2018

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 and security concerns, and political controversy.

Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford quietly announced the closure more than a month ago, in a press release heralding a twoyear 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 after that date, too.

About 500 direct jobs are at stake. But Robert Walker, head of the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), said in a statement to employees that he anticipates NRU will continue to require “essentially the same workforce it employs today for at least the next five years.

“We will be actively working to retain, retrain and redeploy those staff eventually affected by the shutdown of the NRU.”

CNL, the new, wholly owned subsidiary of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) operating the Chalk River nuclear science establishment, declined further comment Monday.

The government weighed several competing factors in its decision to shut down the world’s oldest operating nuclear reactor, 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.

On the other hand, several expensive and high-profile breakdowns in recent years have fuelled speculation about the reactor’s long-term viability and safety.

What’s more, extending NRU isotope production past 2016 reneges on a commitment Canada made at last year’s global nuclear security summit to cease NRU production using highly enriched, weaponsgrade (HEU) uranium.

International pressure mounted on Canada in recent years over the use of HEU, rather than safer low-enriched uranium, for isotope production. Critics have accused the federal government of failing to honour the spirit of non-proliferation commitments. Others have raised alarms about nuclear theft and nuclear terrorism. It’s unclear, too, what impact the closure will have on the final stage of the government’s plan to reorganize AECL.

Rickford’s office declined comment. In an emailed statement, departmental spokesman Jacinthe Perras said “the significant, ongoing work of Chalk River will remain a source of quality employment and the laboratories will continue to require the contribution of a sizable and highly-skilled workforce.”

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.

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 expected that NRU itself would continue operation for important neutron physics research, engineering research and development.

Despite breakdowns and safety concerns, AECL has said 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 NRU’s future surfaced again last year, when then-Natural Resources minister Joe Oliver confirmed that one option was to shutter the NRU.

The reactor’s future rested on it delivering innovative scientific and economic benefits once medical isotope production ceased in 2016, Robert Walker, the head of AECL, said in a separate interview.

The reactor sprang a heavy-water leak in 2009 that led to a 15-month, $70-million shutdown and a global shortage of medical isotopes. That followed another emergency safety shutdown in 2007.

Parliament legislated the reactor to resume operation and soon after fired Linda Keen, then president of the watchdog Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, who had ordered the safety shutdown.

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.

Its reluctance to commit to a replacement is understandable. The MAPLE 1 and MAPLE 2 reactors 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, the problem 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 be at least $1 billion, including more than $600 million already spent by taxpayers and Ottawa’s Nordion, formerly MDS Inc.

Rickford’s February statement said the two-year isotope production extension is “designed to help support global medical isotope demand between 2016 and 2018 in the unexpected circumstances of shortages.”