Stern Laboratories

4 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 10 and components. Its customers include corporations, government laboratories, reactor owners, nuclear facilities, nuclear regulators, reactor fuel vendors, private laboratories, and universities, both within and outside of Canada. New designs emerge Gordon Hadaller, President of Stern Labs believes that today, his company is on the cusp of another one of nuclear power’s upward trajectories. “These are quite exciting times in the industry,” he states. “There are lots of new components in the form of SMRs -- small modular reactors.” This newest generation of nuclear reactors represents a variety of sizes, technology options, capabilities, and deployment scenarios, and portends to offer many advantages over previous systems, including relatively small physical footprints in sites unfit for larger nuclear plants; reduced capital investment; provisions for incremental power additions, known as ‘uprates;’ and enhanced safety and security controls. “Reactor designers and operators need to demonstrate that their reactors are safe under a broad range of conditions,” Hadaller explains. “So this usually requires simulating the heat transport system of the reactor from the fuel channel that generates the heat to the removal system for extracting the heat – the cooling towers and heat exchangers -- as well as the appropriate pumps and control systems to operate pressure and temperature.” “The key thing we have here is the largest lab in North America devoted to nuclear heat transfer; we have 17 megawatts of DC power and we can use that to power up fuel simulators to simulate the core parts of a nuclear reactor. Having that hardware and the hydraulic facilities to pump liquid around gives us a unique position in the industry.” “We have lots of customers coming to us for help in completing their designs and also providing the data required to license their designs,” he continues. “Over the years, we’ve been doing work for a lot of the SMR vendors like NuScale, B&W mPower, and KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute), which has a SMART (System-integrated Modular Advanced Reactor) reactor. And of course, there are companies like GE (General Electric) that have a new BWRX-300 (Boiling Water Reactor) reactor. We also work on projects for Westinghouse and Rolls-Royce, as well. These are the people that are looking to use our facilities.” Stern’s capabilities Stern Labs has a staff of 32 experienced technologists, technicians, and engineers, another valuable asset for its many clients. “We have a couple of PhDs and several Masters Degrees,” Hadaller reports. “A lot of them are long-term employees and most of this work requires experience to be