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Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. may spend up to $200 million to extend the life of the NRU reactor for another 35 years.
AECL president Robert Van Adel told members of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission recently that the company is in discussions with the federal government “on the question of the longetivity of the NRU and what we might do to replace the NRU (as a) long-term research facility.”
Van Adel said that five years ago, “there was some momentum” around the idea of replacing NRU with a new research reactor – the Canadian Neutron Facility (CNF).
But Van Adel said the cost was “judged to be very large” and there also questions about the long-term future of the nuclear industry – “whether the power industry was going to continue to grow… or whether it was going to, in fact, slowly be phased out.”
When the government decided to “delay that decision (on a new reactor) for some time,” AECL began looking at alternatives, Van Adel said, “because we realized at some point that the NRU reactor will reach a point at which it is not desirable to carry on.”
One of the options AECL is looking at is a “complete makeover” of NRU, at an estimated cost of $200 million.
“That is not just a trivial sort of (job) – we are not fixing a few pieces of equipment.
“That would be a full refurb of the reactor and that would extend its life for 30-35 years, according to the assessments.”
NRU has been operating as AECL’s primary research reactor since 1957.
The company announced in 1996 that it intended to shut down NRU by the end of 2005.
But AECL has now applied to keep the reactor running beyond the end of the year, “nominally to 2012.”
In fact, the company says it could go longer.
AECL says it has spent more than $30 million over the past 15 years upgrading the reactor’s safety systems and bringing it up to current standards.
Combined with a “systematic and wide-ranging review” of the reactor, AECL says NRU can keep running “with a very high degree of assurance of safety and reliability.”