Kincardine council received an update for the work progress on the Douglas Point decommissioning project.
Margot Thompson, who is a senior communications officer from Canadian Nuclear Laboratories shared the progress with council during Wednesday’s meeting.
She shared that the administration building had been dismantled.
“A goal of the decommissioning project is full removal. So we want to remove all of the buildings and structures and the waste associated with the facility,” Thompson explained. “We are cleaning up the land, remediating it, to a state of industrial re-use – that’s our agreement now with [Atomic Energy of Canada Limited].”
The decommissioning work was initially divided into a series of work packages. The plan was to start with the administration buildings, then nuclear operations support buildings. Those would then be followed by dismantling the reactor and dealing with the spend fuel bundles that were stored on-site.
Given recent advancements regarding a deep geological repository to store spent nuclear fuel, CNL can have options for possible removal of the spent fuel bundles. The organization is exploring whether to leave them as is for reconsideration in the future, or have them eventually moved to the DGR once it’s completed near the community of Ignace, Ontario and Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation.
“Right now CNL is in the process of what we’ll do with the spent fuel in our spent fuel in the spent fuel canister area,” she said. “The two options we’re considering is keeping it on-site, or consolidating it at Chalk River before eventually it’s destined to that NWMO DGR.”
Thompson said that crews will be finishing off non-nuclear buildings by decommissioning and dismantling the turbine building next.
“Our most recent project we’re working on this year is the turbine buildings. So the demolition of this building will close out that first decommissioning work package,” she shared, adding that they expect the work to be completed by the end of the summer.
After work is complete, crews will move on to demolish the nuclear support buildings, which includes the service building, and clearing out the reactor building.
The Douglas Point reactor site is a federally-owned island within the provincially-owned Bruce Power site.
