Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) has been selected as a subcontractor by Atkins Energy Germany, a subsidiary of SNC-Lavalin, to participate in the decommissioning of RWE’s prototype boiling water reactor in Lingen, Germany.
The 268MWe Lingen nuclear plant was shut down in 1979 after ten years in operation. It is being decommissioned using a deferred dismantling strategy, in which residual radioactivity is allowed to decay naturally over 40-60 years before dismantling takes place.
CNL will second several engineering and operational staff to the Atkins project for four years to conduct planning and fieldwork as part of the decommissioning team. CNL will also provide manufacturing and deployment services for some of the equipment that will be used to support reactor segmentation. This is generally considered one of the most challenging aspects of nuclear decommissioning.
Kristan Schruder, general manager for Reactor Decommissioning at CNL, said the experience gained on the Lingen Project would help with the decommissioning of Canadian reactors.
Atkins Energy Germany was selected by RWE Nuclear in 2019 to progress the decommissioning of the reactor, winning a four-year contract for work that includes segmentation and packaging of the reactor vessel and its internals to enable disposal and subsequent site clearance.
CNL is currently addressing Atomic Energy of Canada Limited’s (AECL’s) nuclear legacy liabilities, which include several prototype and test reactors. CNL manages nuclear liabilities at the Chalk River Laboratories site in Ontario and the Whiteshell Laboratories in Pinawa, Manitoba.
CNL is also leading the cleanup of historic waste sites and is now pursuing commercial work in the global decommissioning and waste management market.
