Talk:Atomic Energy of Canada Limited

Negative Slant - Focus on Old, Irrelevant News
How come there is so much info on the political talk from 200X when NRU had that internal leak? This article is about a big company, with multilpe sites across Canada, with the main research lab in Chalk River. .. Who cares what politician made what silly claim way back when? So Linda Keen skimmed through the executive summary of a safety report and made a comment, big deal ("1 in 1000") this does nothing to inform the reader about the company/lab. The entire “Funding deficiencies, safety concerns, political developments” section is outdated and just plain bad by design. How can this article only have 2 sections - “History” and “How AECL sucks”? Ridiculous.

“Currently, AECL is developing the Advanced CANDU Reactor” That’s all done now - Gen III+ is completed. Currently, Gen iV work is being done. http://www.iaea.org/NuclearPower/Downloadable/Meetings/2014/2014-03-31-04-02-CM-INPRO/Gen4_SCWR.pdf

How about a section on “Facilities” so readers can actually learn something useful about the lab and compnay? See: http://www.cnl.ca/en/home/facilities-and-expertise/all-facilities/default.aspx. Maybe we could get an aerial picture of the site? That would serve the reader well – pictures are worth many words, and such.

Also, the NRU “leak” was internal. Basically the reactor leaked into its own leakage collection system... maybe this should be clarified since “leak” kind of sounds like water was pouring into the river. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.47.148.202 (talk) 20:51, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Location
I feel bad for reverting Mr. Brown's two edits so I will leave a note here. Technically speaking AECL Chalk River Labs reside in the municipality of Deep River, even though it is 6 Km away and their mailing address is Chalk River. This is how it was done many years ago. Second, NPD, definately was built (and later demolished) in Rolphton, just up the highway from Deep River and Chalk River. -- 19:36, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I dispute the removal of the word "meltdown." The NRX reaction went out of control, melting the core and causing steam explosions and release of radioactivity. I don't know what else should have happened in order to raise this event from "serious accident" to "nuclear meltdown." I realize that many of the people maintaining this article must have ties to the nuclear industry and wish to keep the hazards factual, but lets not minimize them either.

"Meltdown"
I've put back a reference to the fuel melting in the NRX accident in 1952, although I do think the description of it rupturing was sufficient to relate the scale of the energy release and subsequent damage (i.e. fuel melting can occur in much less exciting accidents over longer periods of time, such as TMI). The dynamics of a power excursion that leads to steam expulsion (and consequent severe damage to the larger components of a reactor core's boundary) involve rapid rupturing of the coolant boundary, which typically begins with fuel melting.

Note that the original term "meltdown" was inappropriate as this is a term applied, usually in a collquial sense, to large portions of the core fuel inventory melting, as in TMI and larger postulated severe accident scenarios (other than CANDU, where it is mitigated by the bulk moderator heat sink).

-- Jeremy Whitlock, 2005-05-16

Conflict of interest
User:Whitlock works for the AECL. His last edits have been primarily removing accusations and criticisms of the company.


 * And your edits are clearly either not well informed or anti-nuclear. For instance, there was no explosions at the NRX "meltdown". There were no markable amounts of radioisotopes released either. I have pictures of the clean-up all they used were mops and bunny suits. I will talk to someone who would know about the "dome explosion". Until then, this has been removed;
 * was the first reactor in history to undergo nuclear meltdown when four control rods were accidentally removed. A series of explosions blew a four-ton dome four feet into the air and embedded it in the superstructure. Radioactive dust and gas was released into the atmosphere contaminating the recator
 * I would also like to look your the "many criticisms" too. -- metta, The Sunborn  21:15, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The Canadian Nuclear Society website has a detailed [article] about this accident. I found the following interesting points: I hereby declare that I share the same conflict of interest ast User:Whitlock: I also work for AECL. --Yannick 01:28, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * On December 12, 1952, a partial meltdown of the NRX reactor core at Chalk River, Ontario, occurred.
 * ...the volume of the gas holder changed by means of a domed cylinder that slid up and down on sealed tracks.
 * At 15h11, the dome of the gas holder suddenly jumped to its highest point, indicating that a hydrogen-oxygen explosion took place inside the calandria.
 *  Inside the reactor, the sheathing around some of the fuel rods and even some of the calandria tubes had burst.
 * ...fission products...were released to the cooling air and then discharged through the stack.

This page seems to be dominated by people with a vested interest in nuclear energy, and are trying to cover up things that might give nuclear power a bad name. I am actually pro-nuclear, before anyone starts..


 * Then stop removing things to make AECL look unduly evil. The radioactive water is monitored, not to be monitored. "following the accidental removal of four control rods" leads the reader to falsely assume it was all human error and that there was only one cause of the failure. In situations like this there is something called complex failures when lots of things have to go wrong. I will add the embedding of the 4-ton dome though. The addition to the opening paragraph is totally not allowed under wikipedia policy unless you can acutally prove it. -- metta, The Sunborn  17:56, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Proposed wording solution
I reviewed of the NPOV policy and concluded that the word meltdown must neither be removed nor made prominent. Both POV's exist in society, and therefore both must be represented. I propose the following wording:

The incident has popularly been labelled a partial meltdown, but the nuclear industry prefers to reserve the term for a more serious class of accident.

A similar statement could go on the NRX page, where the accident could be discussed in more detail. The nuclear meltdown page already provides an adequate definition of the term.

--Yannick 00:53, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

'Dome Explosion'
This particular event seems to be hotly disputed. I believe that the current wording, which is along the lines of 'a four tonne dome was embedded in the superstructure' is sensationalist, although it could be justified as a means of in conveying the power of a hydrogen explosion, if it does accurately describe the events.

I think that the most pressing concern is to establish where this information came from. From reading the article posted at [article], it seems that the movement of the dome was not a major concern. I assume that this statement must have arisen from some more published technical reports on the matter. If a user could obtain them, it might clear the air. Once this is accomplished, the wording may become a more straightforward task.

As it seems to be an issue, I will declare that I once worked for a summer science camp in Deep River, and, while not an employee of AECL, did do four months of research at the CRL site.

--supasheep 01:47, 31 Aug 2005 (UTC)


 * Thank-you, I believe the same thing, I have never worked for AECL either. So I say we have pretty good case against this wording. I just added it in to keep this anon user happy. This is from the many things proposed above. So thanks for comment. -- metta, The Sunborn  04:26, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation needed on AECL's new President
Hugh MacDiarmid was just appointed as AECL's new president early in 2008. There is a wiki wrapped around his name in the AECL article, but when this is accessed, it transfers to a person now dead, a Scottish poet. So there is a need to either remove the wiki or to write a short piece on the new AECL head, distinct from the Scottish poet.

User: FrankEldonDixon 12:50 p.m., GMT+5, January 17, 2008 FrankEldonDixon (talk) 17:50, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I fixed this by removing the wiki on Hugh MacDiarmid. Probably an article should be written on AECL's president at some point, and then if this is done, disambiguation will be necessary to distinguish the articles.

User: FrankEldonDixon, 5:48 p.m., GMT+5, January 17, 2008 FrankEldonDixon (talk) 22:48, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Suggest increased importance for AECL article and nuclear energy
In view of significant current media coverage of AECL, dating from December 2007 and ongoing, I would urge others to get involved to improve the AECL article and ones related to it. I did do some work adding to the AECL article, and plan to do more in the near future. Also, nuclear energy is undergoing a resurgence these days, and I believe that this should transfer into a higher importance within wikipedia for articles related to this field. I grew up in Deep River, my father is a retired AECL engineer who made several key contributions (I spoke with him at length about this in recent weeks), and I worked at Chalk River Labs for one summer during my university years, eventually choosing a different scientific career.

User: FrankEldonDixon 12:55 p.m., GMT+5, January 17, 2008 FrankEldonDixon (talk) 17:55, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Maple reactors abandoned in 2008?
The article talks about the Maple isotope-production facility as ongoing, but they were abandoned four years ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/business/worldbusiness/17nuke.html.

-- Dan Griscom (talk) 00:02, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

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Therac-25 deaths/injuries
No mention of their manufacturing of therapy units, one model of which was responsible for multiple deaths and injuries worldwide via software coding errors? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 Little grape (talk) 10:10, 20 May 2023 (UTC)