The impending shutdown of a nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ontario, is posing some serious challenges for Canadian researchers who depend on this facility’s unique capabilities. A coalition, led by the University of Saskatchewan and McMaster University, has been lobbying the federal government to provide a decade’s worth of funding that would ensure these scientists and engineers gain an alternative access to a scarce commodity: beams of the subatomic particles known as neutrons, which emerge from the heart of a reactor.
Some of the support requested would contribute to the maintenance and development of foreign facilities that generate neutron beams for research, so that Canadians would have ready access to these sites. Some of the money would also go to operations within Canada, particularly the upgrading of a reactor at McMaster’s campus in Hamilton.
The proposal, dubbed the Canadian Neutron Initiative (CNI), has been recommended for funding by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance in the next federal budget. That recommendation capped one of the CNI’s busiest years since it was formed in 2015, following news that the Chalk River reactor – known officially as the National Research Universal (NRU) – would close in 2018.
University Affairs – Tim Lougheed – Jan 23, 2018.
Want More Investigative Content?
