Decommissioning Techniques – 200 Series, Chalk River Labs

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ (CNL) Chalk River Campus is home to a cluster of connected facilities, commonly known as the 200 series buildings, comprised of B200A/B, B204, and B220. These facilities are currently undergoing active decommissioning by the Facilities Decommissioning group. The 200 series buildings housed and processed spent fuel rods from the National Research Experimental (NRX) reactor.

Many innovations in decommissioning techniques have been used within the 200 series over the years, this presentation looks to focus on methods used in 2024. The majority of the work within the 200 series over the course of the year was in B204.

The B204 fuel rod bays are connected to NRX via a fuel rod trench. The bays in the facility were required to be shielded and therefore significant planning and coordination between many groups was developed in order to achieve this work within the required time scale. Due to the significant dose rates involved, ALARA measures for this work concentrated on remote tooling, CCTV, and drone scans all while considering methods to reduce the time team members needed to spend in elevated fields.