Adventure Inside Canada’s BIGGEST Nuclear Laboratory

During Nuclear Science Week last fall, Mohamad Saleh and I were given the opportunity to explore the place where Canada’s nuclear story began – Chalk River Laboratories! Recognized today as the country’s largest nuclear research campus, the site is run by nuclear science & technology organization, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), and owned by the crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL).

While there, we hiked up to the site that could hold Canada’s first low-level waste facility, named the Near Surface Disposal Facility (NSDF). Approved for construction by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), the NSDF would safely contain low-level nuclear waste until it decayed to background levels you’d find in nature. Mohamad and I also went inside legacy research reactors, including the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor and the Nuclear Power Demonstration (NPD) reactor, and toured the site’s operating research reactor, the Zero Energy Deuterium (ZED-2) reactor. Visiting the site’s various labs and chatting with their scientists was most certainly a memorable opportunity!

⏰TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - A Rare moment inside Canada's largest nuclear lab
02:54 - The Chalk River Campus
03:42 - National Research Universal Reactor
08:21 - Reactor Control Room of the NRU
09:58 - Near Surface Disposal Facility (NSDF)
12:28 - How does the NSDF Function?
16:18 - High Temperature Fuel Channel Lab
18:54 - Fuel Fabrication Lab
19:22 - TRISO Advance reactor fuels
21:25 - Molten Salt Reactor Lab
21:52 - Mechanical Equipment Development
24:11 - Space Reactor Research
27:25 - Science Collaboration Centre
28:28 - Nuclear Power Demonstration Reactor
30:23 - ZED - 2 Reactor

🙋🏾‍♂️WHO AM I:
I'm Osama, I have a background in Nuclear Engineering and work in Toronto, Canada. On my channel I help demystify nuclear technologies by simplifying them.

🔗 CONNECT WITH OSAMA
🎥 YouTube Channel (Podcasts) - @goingnuclearwithosamabaig
📸 Instagram - @usimama

GRAB A COFFEE WITH ME
☕ I love meeting up with people in real life (and Virtually). So here's a standing offer - if you fancy taking a trip to Toronto (Canada) and want to chat, I'll buy you a coffee, no questions asked. I'm generally available most weekday evenings after 7pm.

🚧 Disclaimer: views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the video belong solely to Osama, and not necessarily to Osama's employer, organization, committee or other group or individual.

#Nuclear #Canada #reactor

[raybo]

Canada needs to grow this industry massively. We were world leaders once

[sayyeda]

Thank you for sharing, this was very interesting and informative!

[salmanmakhdoom]

Amazing Osama! Keep up the good work. I was thinking to plan a visit to CNL but I think I don’t need now. You covered almost everything.

[Ehsan-Musafir]

This is amazing! Thanks for doing this.

[legacychristie]

I work there, thanks this is the video we needed.

[piskac]

Great must be tremendously exciting for you, thanks for sharing!

[dodaexploda]

I'm only at the start of this video. Exciting

[solomondevera]

At section 3:21, there are no grizzly bears in the surrounding areas: should be black bears to be more realistic.

But it’s an awesome video showcasing the CRL Site.

[GalenMatson]

Great access for this trip! Please tour a fast reactor!

[revcrussell]

I used to call it the "Upper Canada Village" of the nuclear industry when NRU was running. I was in charge of making the Iodine-125 for eight years there. I miss those days.

[swokatsamsiyu]

Attempt two of reacting to this awesome video. You will have to forgive me for the sometimes weird descriptions of things. For reasons unknown, some algorithms have taken offence to me using the proper capitalised abbreviations for reactors and such.

The Canadian grand old Lady isn't the only commercial power reactor making medical isotopes. There is another pressure tube reactor that has been taught to do the same thing, our very famous big graphite-moderated friend. It makes Sm-153, Lutetium-177, Cobalt-60, Iodine-125 and 131, Molybdenum-99. There is a nice video about it, but unfortunately it is only in Russian with no subs.

And who ever said that reactors cannot age gracefully? The special No. 2 you showed us in the video, proves that this can be done. Almost 60 yrs old, and still going strong!

[davidwilkie]

No one identifies asteroids etc as "Nuclear Waste" left over from the fossil fuels forming the Sun, it's not a recognized convention, yet, but the Sun is the most dangerous source of arrent radiation to threaten our planet on a regular basis, so why don't we have backup batteries to rescue something of civilization after catastrophes any half trained Cosmologist or Geologist students can explain..

Which is why this video is vital knowledge to democratic governance everywhere on the planet.

[dodaexploda]

Absolutely amazing video. I really want to know more about high temp nuclear. I did some quick searching of CNL a week ago. For climate change I think we should just start talking about creating "heat city". That is a process heat manufacturing city powered by nuclear. But my understanding is that a CANDU doesn't get hot enough for this. I've heard CNL did some research on this, but I'm not sure. I'd like to know more. Let's just create the idea of "heat city" by talking about it.

[darb]

Best 15 years of my career was in NRU, so many stories of night shift shenanigans