Canada’s Saskatchewan Research Council has announced that its Safe Low Power Kritical Experiment (Slowpoke) research reactor has been defuelled in preparation for its decommissioning, and the fuel has been transported to the USA without incident.
The process to initiate decommissioning with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) was started in December 2017. A proposed license amendment will authorise SRC to fully decommission the facility over the next two years.
The Slowpoke is a low-power, self-regulating nuclear research reactor that is used as an analytical tool to conduct analysis for industry. It used low enriched uranium fuel.
SRC has operated it without safety incident since its commissioning in March 1981. Throughout that time, the reactor has surpassed 20,000 hours of operation and conducted more than 240,000 analytical tests.
SRC expects the decommissioning to cost about CAD6.5 million ($4.9 million) and Candu Energy, part of the SNC-Lavalin Group, was selected to provide decommissioning services for the reactor. SNC-Lavalin was in 2016 awarded a contract to decommission the University of Alberta's Slowpoke 2, which ceased operations in July 2018. Decommissioning was formally completed in August.
Slowpoke reactors were developed by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL) in the 1960s, to provide a source of neutrons for research and teaching institutions. Slowpoke-2 reactors remain in operation at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec, at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario and at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica.
Photo: The Slowpoke research reactor in Saskatchewan has been successfully transitioned into a safe state (Photo: SRC)
