http://www.magma.ca/~drcanrt/101027cns.html
"October 27, 2010
Group backs Sask. reactor
by Terry Myers
The head of the neutron science community in Canada says the province of Ontario needs to wake up and get involved in discussions about the future of the Chalk River Labs before it's too late.
The boat's leaving. Either you join on and steer or you watch it sail over the horizon, Dominic Ryan told the NRT last week.
Ryan is a member of the Centre for the Physics of Materials and professor in the physics department at McGill University in Montreal, and he is president of the Canadian Institute for Neutron Scattering (CINS).
CINS has been a strong supporter of past proposals to build a new research reactor at Chalk River to replace NRU.
But members of the institute voted unanimously at their annual general meeting this month to throw their support behind a plan to build a new Canadian Neutron Source (CNS) at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.
The CNS would be a companion facility to the Canadian Light Source synchotron.
The proposal is backed by the province of Saskatchewan, which has promised to contribute $200 million towards the estimated cost of $500-750 million to build the facility.
Ryan said in no way does that mean CINS has given up on Chalk River, but after years of inaction and failed initiatives, the CNS is currently the only game in town.
They've got a site, a university that wants to run it, a city that's clamouring for it, and a province that's willing to back it up with $200 million.
We'd be crazy to say, aw, no that's not really where we'd like it to go, he said.
Ryan said both he personally and the CINS in general have been trying to muster some action around building a replacement for NRU at Chalk River for years, but nobody is.
That's where we're at. If the choice is between Chalk River with no neutrons or Saskatoon with neutrons, it's pretty clear.
Ryan said in many ways, Chalk River is the obvious, most cost-effective place to build a new research reactor because a lot of the accompanying infrastructure is already in place.
But doing nothing is something I cannot sit by and watch, he said.
CINS represents over 400 Canadian researchers and students from universities and industry that use neutron beams to study advanced materials.
In Canada, most of that work has been based at NRU for the past 50 years.
But Ryan said the research community as a group is very mobile and will go wherever the facilities exist to do the work.
If NRU is eventually shut down and there's nothing on the books to replace it, people will just scatter.
Building a new multi-purpose research reactor to replace NRU has been the centrepiece of the local CREATE (Chalk River Employees Ad hoc Task ForcE) group's vision of Chalk River as a new national lab.
Ryan said that in theory, there's nothing stopping two new reactors being built - the CNS in Saskatoon and a new facility at Chalk River.
The CNS is modelled on an Australian research reactor called the Open Pool Australian Lightwater (OPAL) reactor, with a core about the size of a beer keg.
Unlike NRU, which has a core three metres high and wide, Ryan said that means the CNS would be limited in some of the applications that could be carried out there.
Ryan said he could imagine two reactors being built, the smaller CNS and a larger reactor on the scale of NRU, with different missions.
Separating the two groups might actually make more sense, since it would cut down on competition for access to the facilities, he said.
Either way, he said, we're looking at time ticking away.
The federal government has only committed to keeping NRU operating until 2016.
After that, the situation gets really fragile.
If we don't have something happening by then - and I mean, holes in the ground and concrete being poured - then everything evaporates, Ryan said.
Standing start
Ryan is clearly frustrated at the constant delays and excuses that have blocked efforts to build a new reactor at Chalk River.
He has been directly involved since the days of the proposed Canadian Neutron Facility (CNF) in the late 1990s.
Former Industry Minister John Manley famously told the NRT that the CNF had been approved in principle in 1999 - the only question was how the government was going to fund it.
It was all done, we were set, and then it didn't happen, Ryan said.
In contrast, Saskatchewan has come from a standing start just two years ago to putting a solid proposal on the table.
A province of a million people that people think of as potash and wheat has basically written a cheque for $200 million, Ryan said.
That's where we are, and yet somehow Ontario is nowhere. Why is that?
Ryan said it's a matter of vision.
Saskatchewan has purposefully set out to develop the province's knowledge-based, high-tech economy, while Ontario seems to be heading into Detroit rust-belt mode.
I don't really understand why we're here (at this point), he said.
There is 50-plus years of history at that site (Chalk River), the whole nuclear industry is based in Ontario. Why are we even talking about Saskatchewan?
It takes a serious lack of vision (to get here).
While a new reactor carries a big pricetag, perhaps up to $1 billion, Ryan says he doesn't believe money is the real issue when it comes to this kind of project.
They can always find the money if they want. It's about the vision, and where you see Canada in the next 10, 20 or 30 years.
In a press release announcing their support of the Saskatchewan project, CINS says the CNS will support research on materials of many kinds, including bio-materials and pharmaceuticals for the medical and life sciences.
It will support a spectrum of research and development, from fundamental research into new exotic materials, such as superconductors which have no electrical resistance, to development of industrial materials and manufacturing processes."
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