Late News

摘要

Canada's isotope Prouction reactor will stay down until early 2010, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) announced on August 12. Since the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor is one of the main producers of radioisotopes for medical applications, its extended outage, which began on May 15 following the discovery of a small leak of heavy water, has led to worldwide shortages of medical isotopes, particularly molybdenum-99.rnAECL had previously predicted that the reactor, which is located at AECL's Chalk River Laboratories, would return to service in late 2009, but a detailed analysis of scans taken over the whole of the reactor vessel wall using a new advanced inspection probe identified a total of nine sites that will probably require repair. Given these results, AECL is considering applying the weld build-up technique over a broad area at the inside base of the wall, covering all nine of the sites, as the most efficient and durable way to proceed.