May 18, 2011
NRU begins month-long
shutdown
by Terry Myers
The NRU reactor at Chalk River has been shut down again, but this time
it's not the same thing at all.
Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd announced last week that NRU began a
planned 33-day “outage” on May 15.
The shutdown will run until June 17.
AECL said the purpose of the outage is to complete maintenance and
inspection work designed to “enhance the reliability of NRU and to
fulfill AECL’s commitment to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.”
“This commitment was to inspect the repaired vessel within nine months
of returning the NRU to service in August 2010.”
NRU was returned to service last August after it had been shut down for
15 months to repair corrosion on the wall of the reactor vessel.
As part of its approval to restart the reactor, the CNSC required that
AECL shut down the reactor for a month at a time once a year to do
maintenance and repairs.
The first outage was to start no later than nine months after NRU
restarted last August.
In a video posted on the website nrucanada.ca, which will include
regular updates on the outage, AECL vice-president and chief nuclear
officer Hank Drumhiller said this shutdown is not like the last.
“A key aspect of this outage is that this is a planned outage, in
comparison to the previous outage, the vessel leak repair, which was a
forced outage.
“It's totally different,” he said.
Drumhiller said NRU has “performed really quite well” since it was
returned to service last summer, with regular five-day outages each
month to do regular maintenance.
This longer shutdown will allow AECL to do work that would not fit
within the regular five-day window, he said.
Drumhiller said a lot of work has gone into planning the extended
outage, which will allow AECL to “start off as a well-oiled machine to
go out and execute this outage in a very safe and efficient manner.”
Ted Moryto, manager of the extended outage, said more than 100 people
have been involved in the planning and preparation for the shutdown,
which will involve specialized tooling to do in-depth inspections of
the reactor.
Drumhiller said AECL “learned a lot” during the shutdown to repair the
vessel.
“NRU may be old but it's not tired, and that's part of what's keeping
it from being tired, is these refurbishments, these updates and
preventitive maintenance being done as part of these outages,” he said.
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