I was delighted to learn (NRT, February 2, 2022) of Al Cooper’s family members following in his illustrious CANDU operations footsteps. In the early 1970s as an employee of Ontario Hydro Nuclear, I was attached to Al’s shift at NPD for operations training, preparing myself for an assignment organizing nuclear training programs for the first offshore CANDU 600s reactor staff. It didn’t take long to realize that Al was the type of shift supervisor you’d hope to have when control room lights go out on a graveyard shift and stay out. Al used to pick me up on Bass Lake Road on his way to NPD. I recall one bitterly cold -30°C January night leaving NPD with Al at midnight after a 4-12 shift. Driving down into Meilleur’s Bay on a deserted and freezing highway 17, Al’s car curiously slowed up, sputtered a bit and then lost power steering. Wordlessly, Al guided us, smooth as silk, to a stop on what little shoulder space was left in the snow. Al’s immediate and unflappable diagnosis, “Looks like we’re out of gas”, was impressive, although perhaps took some shine off his practical reputation. Nevertheless, moments later, one of our operating crew, fortunately leaving NPD after the shift supervisor, pulled his car in just ahead, enabling swift rescue from the cold within 5 minutes. Knowing Al was then also a lucky shift supervisor thus solidified his reputation.
Around that time the acute shortage of heavy water was well known, fed by demands for four Pickering A units followed shortly after by another four units at Bruce A. Not quite so well known was the significant and successful effort in the early CANDU days needed to hire, train and qualify first operators and shift supervisors for these reactors. Interestingly, around this time all Ontario CANDU station managers had graduated from shift supervisor positions at either NRX or NRU, including Deep River’s indomitable George Howey. George ran the nuclear training program, centralized at Rolphton Nuclear Training Centre RNTC. George’s philosophy was that every employee in a CANDU plant must have some type of formal training, distinguished entirely from George’s own on-the-job NRX training.
Staff for the CANDU 600 training program came from Argentina, Romania, Korea and also Japan, the latter building their own heavy water research reactor, so long ago that it’s now decommissioned. Over many decades the operational performance record of these CANDU 600 reactors, initiated by and carried forward by those very first trainees, who also represented the first senior management teams, has been spectacular.
At the start of the 1980, with the CANDU 600 training program completed, employment for me on Pickering’s world-leading Canadian-designed full-scope reactor simulator looked technically attractive. Potential commuting to work on the 401 was though a non-starter, as it was for winter weather at Bruce A, as an alternative. A move to Chalk River was then quickly clinched after a Hydro Executive ‘Suit’ visited Point Alexander to assure Reeve Guy Du Manoir that NPD would be kept operational for many, many more years. This assurance prompted a quick job enquiry to Dave Thompson, Director of AECL Reactor Operations. Two weeks later I started my own NRU shift supervisor training, under the competent guidance of another unflappable gentleman, Guy Lemire of Point Alexander. Shortly after, Hydro announced an early date for the NPD shutdown.
The Nuclear Heritage Society, unsurprisingly, likes to emphasize success stories. My efforts should thus well qualify, as at the end of my NRU shift supervisor tenure, I can credibly claim to be the only person to have, successfully and rapidly, transferred a number of hot active fuel elements, from a heavy water reactor core, into the internals of a primary coolant system heat exchanger, not a very easy thing to do. No one ever predicted this possibility for NRU. Two weeks later I was promoted into a desk job in nuclear safety. The hapless Dave Thompson was then left to supervise a difficult, messy and unique 3-month fuel recovery and clean-up operation, enough to justify a claim for yet another nuclear success story.
All these years later we are, nevertheless, still on good speaking terms.
