The following information bulletin is in accordance with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's (AECL) ongoing commitment to voluntary public disclosure of events related to the Chalk River Laboratories (CRL).
Reactor Performance Meets Expectations as AECL Provides Six Month Update to Commission
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) today appeared before the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to provide a six-month update on the progress of its organizational Corrective Action Plan and the operating performance of the Chalk River Laboratories NRU reactor.
“We are pleased with the performance of the NRU reactor and the progress of the Corrective Action Plan following the restart last summer,” said Hank Drumhiller, Vice-President of Operations and Chief Nuclear Officer at AECL Nuclear Laboratories. “AECL has seized this opportunity to strengthen a number of areas of our operations, such as equipment reliability and operational standards, and we’ve already made great strides in a number of key focus areas.”
Since AECL returned the NRU research reactor to service in August 2010, it has operated on its normal operating cycle with no vessel heavy water leakage and repairs functioning as designed. All demands for medical isotopes have been met during this period and planning is ahead of schedule for NRU’s first planned month long outage.
In addition to monthly five day outages for planned maintenance and supporting operations activities, the planned extended outage of NRU is scheduled to begin May 16, 2011. The month long outage enables AECL to carry out more extensive maintenance and inspections, and to fulfill CNSC licensing obligations.
AECL also updated the CNSC on the status of its Corrective Action Plan, a comprehensive program to improve organizational performance, reporting good progress in the first six months of implementation.