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Environmental Protection and Performance Reporting

CNL’s commitment to sustainable development is factored into all of our business planning activities.
Environmental Protection and Performance Reporting

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. The Chalk River Laboratories has been ISO 14001 certified since 2004 and the 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.

Overall, CNL’s environmental performance has been steadily improving in recent years. We post the detailed evidence, here, publicly, to demonstrate our commitment to environmental stewardship, and to help secure Canadians’ acceptance for the continued exploration of nuclear science and technology.

CNL Sustainability Report – 2025

As Canada’s National Nuclear Laboratory, we strive to ensure that sustainability is integrated into all the work we do and all the decisions we make.

We are pleased to share with you the CNL Sustainability Strategy for the fiscal year 2024-2025 entitled Built to Innovate. This report highlights our performance in the areas of environmental, social and governance, and demonstrates our efforts to advance the sustainability goals established by AECL.

We encourage you to read the Executive Summary (PDF, opens in a new tab) and the full document, and to share it with your colleagues, community members and other stakeholders who have an interest in CNL.

Overall, CNL’s environmental performance has been steadily improving in recent years. We post the detailed evidence, here, publicly, to demonstrate our commitment to environmental stewardship, and to help secure Canadians’ acceptance for the continued exploration of nuclear science and technology.

Policy

  • 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