Repurposing the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station as an Advanced Recycling Centre: A Key to the Future of Cleaner Nuclear Power

Abstract

With the shut-down of Pickering’s CANDU reactors in 2024 some 5000 highly skilled jobs will be lost directly as well as about $1 billion in annual revenue to the region. Eight silent venerable reactor CANDU hulls will remain for about 40 years. So will 17,000 tonnes of used CANDU fuel stored on site, with very little prospect politically and societally to move such highly radiotoxic material elsewhere through the roads and towns of Ontario. The alternative examined here is to detoxify the material locally via economical recycling through proven-safe waste-consuming fast-neutron reactors (FNRs). At power equal to current levels, 3000 MWe, this detoxification can be done in about two decades without producing further long-lived nuclear fuel waste. The remnants consist of less than 1% stable and fast-decaying valuable fission products plus benign depleted uranium that serves as FNR fuel replenishment for centuries. Jobs are maintained and so is the local economy.