CNL’s High Bay and Protoyping Machine Shop for radioactive equipment, located at the Chalk River Laboratories (CRL), is for the set up and qualification of tooling and equipment. The building is unique at CRL, in that it includes a large high bay area (16,500 ft2) with an overhead crane, and is located within the controlled area of the laboratories. It is ideal for equipment testing and mock-ups that require a radioactive laboratory area, a large space and/or an overhead crane.
The HBL are unique, as it is not common in Canada to have laboratories with large workspaces that can accommodate radioactive tooling and mock-ups, which are integrated with the expertise of a site equipped with hot cells and a decontamination facility. The HBL space includes shipping doors, an overhead crane and a concrete floor suitable for forklift access adjacent to a set of radioactive laboratories. Equipment and tooling can be brought to the HBL after decontamination for activities such as testing and post field test forensics. The staff that work in the HBL are highly skilled mechanical engineers, designers and technologists.
Recently a mock-up of a hot cell window change was installed in the HBL in order to rehearse this important job. It was critical for staff to ensure that the actual cell window change occurred without incident in a short period of time. Similar mock-ups for NRU related and CANDU® reactor refurbishment activities have also occurred.