update on Chalk River, CANADA

Jan 19, 2008 04:30 AM
Peter Calamai
Science Reporter

The oldest nuclear research reactor in the world is still chugging away at Chalk River, already running three years beyond its scheduled retirement date to meet global demand for medical isotopes.

Yet in a nearby building two new custom-built MAPLE reactors, designed specifically for isotope production, sit idle eight years after they were supposed to replace the 50-year-old, multipurpose National Research Universal reactor.

The new reactors aren’t operating because of a series of hard-to-believe blunders by once world-class Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the Crown corporation responsible for designing and building them.

The blunders include:

An unproven and overly intricate design that strained the competence of AECL engineers and scientists.

Shoddy workmanship and lax quality control, which meant grit particles stopped two sets of safety control rods from shutting down the reactors.

An unexplained miscalculation about changes in reactivity – the reactor’s oomph – on which the entire safety scenario is based.

In the view of most nuclear experts and informed observers, these AECL failures are the real cause of last month’s crisis in isotope production that culminated this week in the Harper government’s unprecedented firing of Linda Keen, president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

A contributing factor was the refusal of the Liberal government under Jean Chrétien to commit roughly $500 million to replace the Universal reactor with a super-reactor called the Canadian Neutron Facility dedicated to scientific research, and test new designs for the CANDU power reactor.

Overarching all this was the meagre funding over the past decade by Liberal and Conservative governments for AECL to remedy health, safety, licensing and security shortcomings at the sprawling Chalk River laboratories.

A special 2007 report by the federal auditor general recently made public by AECL estimated that $600 million would be needed for such urgent improvements over the next five years. Yet since 2002 Ottawa has provided just $34 million.

“We should never have got ourselves in this situation,” says Bill Garland, a professor of nuclear engineering at McMaster University who worked at AECL and Ontario Hydro’s nuclear division.

“Everybody knew that Canada was the chief source of medical isotopes and yet they just stood by and did nothing. Why didn’t the U.S. build its own isotope reactor?”

Everyone also should have known that Canada’s isotope production hung by the slenderest of threads. The signs were everywhere.

As far back as October 1998, the Star ran a front-page story saying the Universal reactor was on its last legs and unless work began quickly on a replacement, Canada would suffer from a “neutron gap.”

As well, top AECL management was repeatedly hauled on the carpet before the Nuclear Safety Commission and its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Control Board, to explain poor operating practices at the Universal reactor, including foot-dragging on implementing safety upgrades ordered by the federal regulator.

In June 2005, staff at the safety commission said in a written report that the AECL staff running the aging Universal reactor were prone to “overconfidence,” “complacency” and “deficiencies in management oversight and safety culture.”

These same failings, it appears, also lie behind the woes at the MAPLE reactors, which together with an extraction plant make up the Dedicated Isotope Facility.

Originally budgeted at $160 million and scheduled to begin producing isotopes by November 2000, the facility was an example of forward thinking by MDS Nordion, the private company that handles marketing and distribution of the medical isotopes produced in the Universal reactor.

Nordion contracted AECL to build the two MAPLE reactors — one as a backup — in plenty of time to begin producing isotopes before the Universal reactor shut down.

But a flawed design and slipshod workmanship meant the first MAPLE reactor flunked its initial commissioning tests. In early 2000, AECL concealed problems with the new reactor’s safety system from the nuclear watchdog for three months.

After AECL missed deadline after deadline and costs skyrocketed, MDS Nordion finally bailed in September 2005. The company handed ownership of the trouble-plagued facility over to AECL and instead signed a 40-year supply agreement.

The MAPLE woes have been a black eye for AECL’s international reputation as a designer and builder of nuclear reactors, despite the company’s attempts to distinguish them from CANDU power reactors.

Especially upset are the retired nuclear engineers, managers and regulators who largely constitute the membership of the Canadian Nuclear Society.

“It’s appalling to have a project that far behind schedule and that far over budget,” says Fred Boyle, a former editor and current publisher of the society’s magazine.

Yet the most common reaction over the deep-seated woes at Chalk River among experts and well-informed insiders is sorrow rather than anger. The former head of one of the largest federal science agencies, speaking on a condition of anonymity, chose these words:

“Canada was in a position of pre-eminence in the world in basic nuclear research, in the nuclear technology for building reactors and in the production of isotopes. Now we’re nowhere as competitive in all three of those areas.

“It’s sad, very sad.”
http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/295589