Nuclear Reactors

Canada is one of the pioneers in the peaceful use of nuclear energy. We were among the very first nations to begin development work on a pressure tube reactor design using heavy water as a moderator.

Various experimental reactors were in operation through the 1950s and ’60s, and the first commercial-size Canadian reactor went into operation at the Pickering A station in Ontario in 1971. There are now 22 nuclear reactors in Canada.

Almost all of them, 20 to be exact, are located in the province of Ontario, which is the most populous and most industrialized of Canada’s ten provinces and two territories. It’s also the country’s media, finance and business centre.

Unlike other countries, Canadian station design has tended to feature large, multi-unit stations, rather than the one-or two-unit stations found in most other countries.

In Ontario, we have two eight-unit nuclear stations: Pickering has eight 540-megawatt reactors built in two sets of four and Bruce has eight reactors in the 840-900 megawatt range, also built in two sets of four. Our newest station, Darlington, range is a four-unit station, each unit of 935 megawatts.

The remaining two reactors, the Gentilly station in the province of Quebec and Point Lepreau in the province of New Brunswick are single-unit stations of around 675-megawatts.

All Canadian reactors are of the uniquely Canadian Pressurized Heavy Water design known as CANDU, which stands for Canada Deuterium Uranium. At present, four of Ontario’s oldest reactors – two units at the Pickering A station and two units at the Bruce A station are out of service. The two Bruce Units will be having an extensive refurbishment. It has been decided that the two Pickering Units will remain shutdown and will be decommissiond.

Uranium Mining

Another major element of Canada’s nuclear industry is uranium – Canada is the world’s leading supplier of uranium, providing about 35 percent of current world demand.

Canadian uranium supplies are located entirely in northern Saskatchewan, which has some of the world’s richest uranium deposits.

Nuclear Exports

Canada is also an exporter of power reactors. Eight CANDU reactors are now in operation in Korea, Romania, Argentina, and a China.

Nuclear Medicine

There’s another aspect of the Canadian nuclear industry that may be of interest to this audience.

Every day, over 50,000 nuclear medicine procedures are carried out around the world and thousands of lives are saved in the process. Canada is one of the world’s leading suppliers of radioisotopes for use in nuclear medicine.

There’s a good probability that the radioisotopes being used in your country today for the treatment of cancer or for the diagnosis of heart and other diseases are being supplied by the Canadian company MDS Nordion and manufactured in reactors located at the Chalk River Laboratories of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.. AECL is also the Canadian federal government corporation that designs and markets the CANDU reactor.

Nuclear Regulation

There is one other aspect of the Canadian nuclear scene that may differ from other countries. In Canada, the production of electricity is a provincial responsibility and the utilities that built, own and operate Canadian nuclear plants are provincial entities.

But all things nuclear in Canada - the licensing and operation of nuclear plants, the licensing and qualification of nuclear workers, nuclear waste storage and disposal, uranium mining, nuclear medicine, etc. – all of this comes under the authority of the federal nuclear regulator.

Together with our Nuclear Power Plants, uranium mining, fuel refining industry, fuel manufacturing, research and development laboratories, medical isotope production, the Canadian nuclear industry in total directly employs in the area of 30,000 people.

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