I'm sorry. I will try.
Engineering research at NRU has supported Canadian industry, both nuclear and non-nuclear, improving competitiveness and opening new markets to Canadian products. The research facilities at NRU have been used by thousands of Canadian engineers and scientists, training generations of Canadians who have added to the knowledge base of our industries and universities. This has raised Canada's profile as a technology leader around the world. The infrastructure for science and industry that the Government of Canada provided at Chalk River was an investment in Canadians that enabled Canadians to innovate and lead. This is what the Government of Canada does best, and this is what we need to do now.
What do we lose if we walk away from NRU? We abandon 50 years of Canadian leadership in nuclear science and technology. ZEEP was the first reactor ever built outside the U.S. It provided critical data for both American and Canadian reactor programs, and it led to the construction of NRX, and then a few years later NRU. When it was completed, NRU was the most powerful nuclear reactor in the world. It was big, effective, and, most importantly, flexible. It was built as a platform to enable research with neutrons. Fifty years later it continues to support world-class research--a strong testament to the vision and abilities of its designers.
The flexible design has proved to be a key feature, as almost all of the activities currently supported at NRU did not exist when it was built. There was no nuclear power industry, the medical isotope business was about to be created, and neutron beam research was in its infancy, limited by weak sources.
In-core research at NRU supported the development of the nuclear power industry in Canada by enabling fuel and component testing in realistic conditions. It continues to contribute both to the stewardship of our CANDU fleet and to the development of next-generation reactor designs.
The large flexible core permitted many materials to be irradiated, leading to the production and exploitation of a wide variety of isotopes, most notably cobalt-60 and moly-99, key medical isotopes around the world. The isotope business was invented in Canada, and the cobalt-60 irradiator was listed as number 11 of Canada's greatest inventions on the CBC. Today, 16 million radiation treatments per year depend on the cobalt-60 that is produced at NRU.
Neutron beam research facilities at Chalk River allow Canadians to study many new materials. These include High-Tc superconductors that offer the promise of zero-loss electrical power transport, hydrogen storage materials and battery electrodes that will enable more environmentally friendly uses of power, and high-strength super alloys and composites that will revolutionize manufacturing in the future.
By providing Canadians with the best neutron source in the world, the Government of Canada invested in Canadians and opened the door to innovations. Bertram Brockhouse was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in physics for his development of the triple-axis spectrometer, an instrument that is replicated in every nuclear neutron beam lab around the world. In many of the bigger facilities there will be several of these instruments. The stress scanner that was invented at Chalk River in the mid-1980s has also been replicated around the world.
These internationally recognized innovations bring me to what is perhaps my main point: closing NRU is not about shutting down a machine; it's about abandoning people.
With the infrastructure provided by the Government of Canada, it enabled all of these developments. But it was the people who brought their imaginations to the flexible, powerful NRU reactor and found a platform to refine their ideas into materials, products, and benefits to science and society. Today's researchers still come from around the world to NRU, not because it's the most powerful or the newest reactor, but for the people. The excellence of the technical and scientific environment provided by the NRC's neutron beam centre has been consistently recognized by NSERC and has stood up to review by international panels of experts.
I can do things in my own research at Chalk River that I could not try at other facilities because of the research environment the staff provides. It has been essential to my research and that of my many colleagues in the Canadian Institute for Neutron Scattering. We bring teams of graduate students and post-docs to NRU, where they get hands-on training by experts in neutron beam techniques and where they meet researchers from around the world. These are the next generation of Canadian researchers. But if NRU is not replaced, where will they work?
When the Challenger failed during launch, investigators focused their attention on the solid fuel boosters. One possibility was that stresses in the joints might have led to the failure. Even with access to neutron beam engineering stress-scanners in the U.S., Thiokol, the NASA contractor that built the boosters, brought a section of the booster up to Chalk River. It was analyzed there to look at the stresses around these bolt holes to make sure they were within tolerance. NASA came to Canada, to NRU, for the people and the expertise that this facility represented. So when Julie Payette goes up tomorrow to the space station, we can all be a little bit more proud knowing that NRU contributed in part to the safety of her trip.
So what happens when the government announces the closure of NRU in 2016 without making a firm commitment to replace it? We lose Canada’s involvement in medical isotope development and supply, the world loses a major supply, and there's a gap that would be tough to fill. The Canadian Neutron Beam Centre, the people who did this work, would be gone in a year. With no future at NRU and no prospect of a new reactor to replace it, the staff will simply leave. They will go and find new places to run their careers. They will go to foreign laboratories, they will be lost to Canada, and our own access to neutron beam facilities will simply disappear.
The Canadian industry will lose its access to a key engineering materials evaluation facility, affecting product reliability and competitiveness. It's not just shuttle parts that get studied at Chalk River. Canada would be unable to participate effectively in the international Generation IV reactor development program that is tasked with creating the next new generation of higher-efficiency reactor designs, which we are going to need if we are going to kick our dependence on fossil fuels technologies.
What should be done? The role of government is to provide infrastructure for science and industry that will enable Canadians to carry out research and develop their businesses. In 1994 the Bacon report recommended that “Canada should make an immediate commitment to develop a new fully equipped reactor-based national source for neutron beam research”, but we didn't. The need for neutron facilities has not diminished. We produced our report last year outlining our vision for what should be the replacement, a multi-purpose research reactor that will serve Canadians as a key piece of infrastructure for science and industry. The multi-purpose concept builds on the successes of NRU and is aimed at drawing together all of the current stakeholders while maintaining the flexibility to serve new and emerging needs. It would combine in-core research, isotope production, and neutron beams for a world-class facility.
A new world-class facility would be a magnet for talented engineers and scientists. Our continued leadership in nuclear engineering and neutron-based research, both fundamental and applied, would be assured. A stable, reliable source of medical isotopes and industrial isotopes would be put in place.
Why embark on such an expensive project in a recession? Construction of the new Canadian Neutron Beam Centre is about building for the future. It is forward-looking, investing in new industries, and training the technical and scientific leaders of tomorrow. As a stimulus project, it is a perfect fit. The construction phase would employ thousands of Canadians directly and generate many more jobs around Canada through contracts awarded to small and medium-sized enterprises. A large fraction of these would be in high value-added engineering projects that would expand Canada’s design and manufacturing base in an industry that is poised for massive market growth. The government could reasonably expect to recoup most of the costs in taxes and developed industries, and it would be strengthening Canada's economy at the same time.
How should we proceed? CINS has already produced a statement of the user requirements for a new multi-purpose centre, as a world-class laboratory for materials research with neutron beams. To make this project a reality, the next step is to establish a formal engineering design, in collaboration with all of the stakeholders, and develop an accurate costing estimate for the project so that the construction can be undertaken in a transparent and responsible manner.
A suitable federal agency should be identified that can undertake such a project. It should be given both the mandate and appropriate funding to coordinate a multi-departmental working group and bring forward a properly costed design proposal within the next year. Canada will then be properly prepared to consider an investment in the future of the Canadian Neutron Centre, a world-class resource for science and industry for the next 50 years.