Government announces decision to shut down NRU reactor by March 31/18

The government has chosen March 31/18 as the date when it will shut down the NRU reactor, Canada's only nuclear reactor devoted to medical isotope production and neutron physics research. The announcement signals the government's decision to abandon its plans for seeking a five-year extension past the October 31/16 end of its current licencing mandate. No new reactor is currently being considered despite calls from the neutron research community and others.

Operated by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), a recently created subsidiary of Atomic Energy of Canada, the 19-month extension must be approved by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

Natural Resources Canada minister Greg Rickford announced that the extension is intended to ensure a global supply of medical isotopes "in the unexpected circumstances of shortages". The government decided in 2009 to exit the medical isotopes business by 2016 and has spent $60 million developing alternative sources of supply (R$, January 31/11 & March 14/13).

If the operating extension is approved, the NRU (National Research Universal Reactor) — which began operations in 1957 — will enter a "state of storage" prior to actual decommissioning. For the next three years, however, research and irradiation activities will be accelerated to squeeze as much capacity from the NRU as possible.

The decision to decommission the NRU is the latest in a long and convoluted history which has seen Canada slip from a pre-eminent position in nuclear research and reactor development and construction to a marginal player.

When the government sold off AECL's Candu division to engineering giant SNC Lavalin in 2011 for $15 million, there were hopes in the research community that it would okay the construction of a new reactor. Instead, Ottawa has been silent, opting to focus on a government-owned, contractor-operated (GoCo) model for the massive laboratories at Chalk River ON. That process is nearing completion as the government considers a number of applications from mainly foreign-dominated consortia (R$, November 12/14).

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