Business View Magazine | September 2022

39 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 9 “We started in this location in 1962 as part of Westinghouse, Canada installing hydraulic equipment and power supplies for experiments to verify nuclear fuel and look for safety limits,” says Gordon Hadaller, President of Stern Laboratories. “In 1988, Westinghouse sold its atomic arm. Frank Stern, the lab manager, and the employees banded together to salvage the lab, forming an employee-owned company called Stern Laboratories.” Since then, Stern Laboratories has branched out into a more extensive worldwide nuclear market and, today, between 25 and 50 percent of its business comes from outside Canada. While Stern Laboratories continues to have a base workload centering on CANDU reactors, the company also works with light water reactors, boiling water reactors, pressurized water reactors, and, most recently, small modular reactors (SMRs). Stern Laboratories is the largest lab of its kind in North America, boasting a massive 17MW of DC STERN LABORATOR I ES INC . power and 13 individually controlled zones, and making it one of the world’s highest power heat transfer facilities. “Our most valuable asset is our experienced team,” says Hadaller. “The work we do is highly technical and often complicated, so you need the hardware and a team of experienced people to conduct the experiments.” Stern Laboratories plays an integral role in new nuclear energy technologies by establishing acceptable safety parameters for in-development reactor technologies. As the world rediscovers nuclear, primarily through SMRs, the lab’s heat transfer experiments help guarantee the safety of future nuclear technologies before commercialization. It does this through five core services: critical heat flux tests; remote handling tools; fuel handling and inspection; fuel simulators, reactor safety, and reliability experiments; and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). In addition, the lab specializes in designing and constructing complex experimental facilities and