18 Facts About CANDU

CANDU is a Canadian pressurized heavy-water reactor design used to generate electric power.

CANDU reactors were first developed in the late 1950s and 1960s by a partnership between Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, Canadian General Electric, and other companies.

In 2020, the CANDU SMR was not selected for further design work for a Canadian demonstration project.

CANDU includes a number of active and passive safety features in its design.

CANDU designs have a positive void coefficient, as well as a small power coefficient, normally considered bad in reactor design.

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The deliberately "sluggish" response of the fission process in CANDU allows controllers more time to diagnose and deal with problems.

The CANDU designs have several emergency cooling systems, as well as having limited self-pumping capability through thermal means .

Since heavy water is less efficient than light water at slowing neutrons, CANDU needs a larger moderator-to-fuel ratio and a larger core for the same power output.

Some CANDU plants suffered from cost overruns during construction, often from external factors such as government action.

Tritium is generated in the fuel of all reactors; CANDU reactors generate tritium in their coolant and moderator, due to neutron capture in heavy hydrogen.

Gentilly-1, in Becancour, Quebec, near Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, was an experimental version of CANDU, using a boiling light-water coolant and vertical pressure tubes, but was not considered successful and closed after seven years of fitful operation.

CANDU has started a 50-year decommissioning process estimated to cost $1.

Main change, and the most radical among the CANDU generations, is the use of pressurized light water as the coolant.

Two new CANDU reactors have been proposed for Darlington with Canadian government help with financing, but these plans ended in 2009 due to high costs.

Interest has been expressed in Western Canada, where CANDU reactors are being considered as heat and electricity sources for the energy-intensive oil sands extraction process, which currently uses natural gas.

CANDU was later purchased by Bruce Power, who proposed expanding the plant to four units of a total 4.

The CANDU was deliberately designed to reduce the need for very large machined parts, making it suitable for construction by countries without a major industrial base.

Information on economic performance on CANDU is somewhat lopsided; the majority of reactors are in Ontario, which is the "most public" among the major CANDU operators.