Environmental Protection
The reality in today’s world is that business and environmental performance now go hand in hand. CNL is proud to be one of thousands of organizations across 155 countries to be registered to ISO 14001 – the internationally recognized standard for certification that demonstrates an organization’s environmental stewardship.
CNL Chalk River Laboratories has been ISO 14001 certified since 2004 and CNL Whiteshell Laboratories has been certified since 2010. During this time, there have been many lessons learned and a steady evolution of CNL’s Environmental Management System. A significant level of effort and vigilance is required to establish, maintain and improve an environmental management system over time.
As Canada’s foremost nuclear science and technology laboratory, it is vital that CNL leads by example in terms of environmental performance. For this reason, CNL has an Environment Policy which ensures that protection of the environment is an integral component of our decision-making in all phases of our business activities, including product development, project planning, project implementation, operations and decommissioning. We also focus our environmental efforts on minimizing nuclear legacy obligations for future generations.
- We practice responsible environmental management.
- We are committed to pollution prevention[1].
- We set environmental objectives and targets to support continual improvement of our environmental performance.
- We set sustainability objectives and targets for energy efficiency, clean energy utilization, waste management and conservation of resources to support continual improvement of our performance.
- We comply with environmental laws, requirements, and recognized standards and guidelines applicable to our activities.
- We review the impacts of our activities, facilities, projects, services and products on the environment.
- We seek to develop and improve technologies to advance environmental protection and clean air solutions.
- We promote public and employee awareness of this policy and our environmental performance.
*Pollution prevention is defined as the use of processes, practices, materials, products, substances or energy that avoid or minimize the creation of pollutants and waste and reduce the overall risk to the environment or human health.
Environmental Plan
The Environmental Plan is a report that is issued in support of the Environment Policy. It describes the strategic environmental objectives for CNL sites.
The Environmental Plan currently includes initiatives to:
- Manage legacy radioactive waste
- Upgrade infrastructure related to current operations
- Manage and monitor emissions
- Build new infrastructure, and
- Implement sustainability actions and green initiatives to improve waste management, energy efficiency, clean energy utilization, fleet management and conservation of resources to continually improve performance
Environmental Performance
CNL is committed to studying and continuously improving the low impact of our operations on the environment.