Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. is in the news today — confirming that the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor will be out of action at least until late 2009. That's a photo, left, distributed by AECL of workers on top of the leaky vessel plunging some inspection tool through the 12 cm wide access point to take pictures of the leak that is at the bottom of the tank, nine metres below from where they are standing. Here's my latest file on that topic:>
The federal government warned Wednesday of a “significant shortage” this summer of the medical isotopes used by thousands of Canadians every day to help diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease and other ailments.
Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq and Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt, in a joint statement issued Tuesday, said they were “disappointed” that Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. now says the National Universal Research (NRU) nuclear reactor at Chalk River, Ont. will be offline at least until late 2009 while the Crown corporation makes complex repairs to fix a leak of radioactive water.
The NRU routinely produced about 40 per cent of the world’s medical isotopes before its shutdown, enough to help about 20 million people in 80 countries around the world each year. For a few months last year, while other reactors around the world were shut down, the NRU was producing the entire global supply of medical isotopes.
“We wish to be clear to Canadians,” the ministers said in their statement. “The unplanned shutdown of the NRU will result in a significant shortage of medical isotopes in Canada and in the world this summer.”
There are only five nuclear reactors in the world that make medical isotopes. Nuclear medicine specialists have been scrambling to find alternative sources or alternative treatments since AECL shut down the NRU on May 14. At that time, AECL said the NRU would be offline for at least a month. A few weeks later, it said it would be out of action until the end of August.
On Tuesday, AECL officials said the NRU will be down for much longer than that.
“The NRU will not return to service before late 2009,” AECL CEO Hugh MacDiarmid said in a conference call with reporters.
The NRU, though, does more than just produce isotopes. It's a research reactor and is used by scientists in Canada and around the world to do all sorts of work. AECL — or whoever ends up managing the facility once a federal government review of the Crown corporation is done — is putting those engineers not involved in the NRU repairs to work on a variety of other tasks for the future of Chalk River Laboratories.
Just got this notice from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Canada's nuclear safety regulator, that AECL is seeking the CNSC's stamp of approval for some of those long-term plans:
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) will hold a hearing in July to consider the proposed Scoping information Document (Environmental Assessment (EA) Guidelines) for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited’s (AECL) proposal to undertake a variety of projects associated with the long-term management of the National Research Reactor (NRU) at Chalk River Laboratories (CRL), Ontario.
The Commission has determined that a public hearing is not necessary to consider the proposed EA Guidelines as per the streamlined EA Process …
The Commission will consider the scope of the project and the scope of the assessment for the construction and installation of supporting infrastructure, as well as modifications to existing facilities to support the NRU Reactor operations until 2021.