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Photo by Saskatchewan Research Council / Saskatoon

Under its Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission operating licence, SRC began socking away money for the decommissioning around a decade ago. That licence also covers the defuelling, which required experts — SNC-Lavalin subsidiary Candu Energy Inc.

“Whilst we are experts at the operation of the SLOWPOKE-2 nuclear reactor, we are not experts at decommissioning reactors. This is not something you do every day,” Crabtree said of the decision to bring in outside experts.

SNC-Lavalin referred a request for comment back to SRC. The U.S. Department of Energy did not respond to requests for comment.

Earlier this summer, Candu Energy and SRC workers clad in radiation suits used a hoist to lift the water-immersed core out of the reactor and place it in a specially-designed transport vessel, one that won’t break if it falls off the back of a truck.

After it sat in the reactor room to “cool” for around two weeks, the core was loaded on the back of a truck and began the first leg of its journey to the sprawling Savannah River Facility south of Augusta, Georgia. But that is only half of the process.

This week, SRC officials including Crabtree were in Ottawa to apply to the CNSC for a decommissioning licence, which will allow the remnants of the reactor to be disassembled and any radioactive material taken to Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario for storage.

Once CNSC grants the licence, a process Crabtree expects will take a few months, the work will take up to half a year. Once the water is purified and disposed of and the gaping hole in the floor filled with cement, it will be like the reactor was never there, he said.

It will be the end of an era for what one SRC scientist, speaking to the Saskatoon StarPhoenix a decade ago, called “one of Saskatchewan’s best-kept secrets” — a reactor most had no idea existed until it was already gone.

amacpherson@postmedia.com

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