Canadian Nuclear Laboratories

School is cool when it's at a nuclear site! Our team at Whiteshell Laboratories was excited to tour students from Sagkeeng Anicinabe High School and Westmont Montessori School around. Highlights included a stop at the Fire Hall and a walk through the WR-1 reactor.

Polonium-210 (Po-210) is an important contributor to the radiation dose all living organisms receive from naturally occurring radionuclides. It also has the potential to build up in organisms faster than they can process it, which, consequently, means it has the potential to build up in aquatic food webs. Despite this, no water quality guidelines to protect aquatic life from Po-210 exist in Canada. Click the link in the comments to learn more about how environmental researchers from Chalk River Laboratories are working with the Clearwater River Dëne Nation in Northern Saskatchewan to gather the data needed to change that! 👇

We're happy to share that our WR-1 Project’s draft Environmental Impact Statement has now passed the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's completeness check and entered the final technical review stage – an important milestone in the environmental assessment process needed to decommission the legacy research reactor. Since it was last submitted in 2022, the project team has been working hard at updating the 1,500 page document and incorporating Indigenous, public, and regulatory feedback: https://lnkd.in/d3sUiQ3h

From the Northwest Territories to Manitoba to Ontario to Québec - CNL is responsibly for safely managing waste all over Canada. Learn more about CNL's waste programs here: https://ow.ly/rSva50V4lW8

The week of February 3 was an opportunity for industry leaders and innovators to discuss the future of mass timber, wood design and construction innovation at the 2025 Ottawa Wood Solutions Conference. As part of the conference, participants had the unique opportunity to visit our Minwamon Building, Support Facility and Science Collaboration Centre on February 6. These innovative buildings, supported by the Green Construction through Wood (GCWood) program, demonstrate how mass timber is shaping the future of sustainable, low-carbon construction. The three mass timber buildings are also the stepping stone to revitalize the Chalk River campus to become a more modern and sustainable nuclear laboratory. Thank you to everyone for visiting!

📢 Calling all experts from small modular reactor (SMR) vendors, equipment suppliers, advanced manufacturers, and regulatory bodies! 📢 Researchers at CNL are looking for your input on what SMR component you feel could benefit from being 3D printed, as part of a project we’re working on with InnoTech Alberta for Natural Resources Canada. Based on the input we receive, we will be using #AdditiveManufacturing to fabricate a scaled version of a #SMR component that we then put through a series of tests and inspections to evaluate the component’s properties and performance. Click the link in the comments to read more about the project and complete the 22-question survey. And please share this with your circles!

Behold! Sand behaving like a liquid! 🌊   Researchers at Chalk River Laboratories are exploring how a fluidized sand bed could be used to capture, store, and release heat produced by fission reactions taking place inside of a nuclear reactor, as part of CNL’s Clean Energy Demonstration, Innovation, and Research (CEDIR) initiative studying hybrid energy systems. But, on a more fundamental level, they’re also exploring the mechanics of these broader systems — called fluidized beds — that make solid particles behave like bubbling liquid.   Check out this post and the linked paper from CNL research scientist Eric Dening Jia, PhD and team to learn how they solved the long-debated mystery behind the waves seen in fluidized beds!

The Nuclear Facilities Operation Building has served multiple roles at Chalk River Laboratories for more than 75 years, primarily as a support facility for the famed NRU reactor and its workers. In July 2022, we began demolishing the building when the site was handed over to our Facilities Decommissioning team. The team spent the next two years ensuring the building was in its safest and most secure state before breaking ground on demolition. In September of 2024, the Nuclear Facilities Operation Building officially came down, marking the conclusion of a long chapter in Chalk River’s history! Congratulations to everyone involved! You can now watch the full demolition take place here. #decomissioning #demoltion #timelapse

This week, we marked International Day of Women and Girls in Science (Feb 11). To mark this special day, we asked some of the women at CNL to share the stories of their own journeys and why they are motivated to stay in STEM. Here’s what they had to say! #IDWGS #womeninSTEM #STEM

Less than one week to go! Don’t miss your chance to join the CHA, Canadian Hydrogen Association (CHA), AtkinsRéalis, and Isowater Corporation on February 18th for a deep dive into the business case, market potential, and opportunities in heavy water production. 📅 Date: February 18th ⏰ Time: 10:00am-11:00am PST / 1:00pm-2:00pm EST Hear from CNL on their approach to producing heavy water from hydrogen production plants, followed by a roundtable discussion on market demand, industry opportunities, and the path forward with experts Sabrina Ullah;Director of Program Interface between the Nuclear and Engineering Services at AtkinsRéalis, Andrew Stuart; Chairman of Isowater, Justin Moores; Acting Deputy Vice President of Business Development and Commercial Ventures for CNL, and Nicholas Kuwahara, P. Eng.; Director for Commercialization at CNL. Register here: https://lnkd.in/gzFV-V-A #hydrogen #hydrogenenergy #cleantech #heavywater #zeroemission #webinar #cleanenergy #roundtable #nuclear #nuclearmarket