Antinuclear

Canada’s Chalk River “medical” nuclear research reactor closes, leaving costly radioactive waste legacy

CBC 31st March 2018  A relic of Canada’s atom age, the NRU reactor is shutting down for good On March 31, a little-known part of Canada’s nuclear history will go dark for the last time.

The National Research Universal Reactor — or NRU — at Chalk River, Ontario will be turned off for good Saturday evening. It first came online in 1957…….

​When ZEEP went online in September 1945, it was the first operational nuclear reactor outside of the United States.

A small, prototype reactor, it was built to demonstrate that uranium and heavy water could be used for nuclear fission and that plutonium could be produced and extracted from the process for military applications……

The NRU was once responsible for producing about 40 per cent of the world’s supply of the medical isotopes used for diagnosis and cancer therapy — starting with cobalt-60 and later extending to other isotopes, such as molybdenum-99. …..

More than 60 years of nuclear research at Chalk River have left behind a legacy of low-level radioactive waste that now has to be contained at a near-surface facility.

Atomic Energy of Canada Limited estimates the cost of dealing with waste at all of its federally regulated sites, including Chalk River, could be as high as $7.6 billion.

April 2, 2018 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized