B1. The Face of a CANDU Under Construction. Like all commercial power reactors, the Canadian CANDU fissions uranium to produce heat, steam, electricity – and plutonium. The core of a CANDU reactor has hundreds of individual tubes that hold uranium fuel bundles. Once the reactor starts up, the fuel bundles become millions of times more radioactive than the uranium from which they were made, due to the build-up of fission products. This radioactivity is so intense that, even if the fission process is halted, the core of the reactor will spontaneously melt down unless actively cooled. Darlington Nuclear Generating Station, Darlington, Ontario. 21 January 1987.
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