6. What has been Canada’s most important contribution through its Chalk River ex
ID: 3281433 • Letter: 6
Question
6. What has been Canada’s most important contribution through its Chalk River experimental nuclear reactor facilities?
7. What challenges did Hyman Rickover have to overcome in putting forward his nuclear submarine proposal and later building the Nautilus. Should Rickover be seen as a kind of independent inventor?
8. Why was the Nautilus’s nuclear reactor design so effective and what were the results of its success?
9. What were some of the proposed projects of Project Ploughshare and its Soviet equivalent?
10) Why did Americans (and others) become scared of nuclear power? What were the paradoxical results of the discovery of radiation burns and the medical use of radiation?
11) What is the point of Mahaffy’s tale of the construction, use and eventual demolition of the Electronics Research Building at the Georgia Tech Research Institute?
Explanation / Answer
The Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario were set up by the government in the 1940s and have been the locus of much the world's successful R&D into the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The 42 MWth National Research Experimental (NRX) reactor was built there in 1947, followed in 1957 by the 135 MWth National Research Universal (NRU) reactor, a world leader in the development and production of nuclear medical isotopes.
The 60 MWt WR-1 research reactor was built by GE at Chalk River Laboratories and started up in 1965. The original purpose of the unit was as a test reactor for a proposed organic-cooled CANDU power reactor. The reactor had vertical fuel channels cooled by organic liquid (an oil), moderation was by heavy water in a calandria vessel, and control was by varying the level of moderator. The organic coolant meant low operating pressure and very low corrosion rates for metallic fuel, with 425ºC outlet temperature.
Two 10 MWth MAPLE (Multipurpose Applied Physics Lattice Experiment) reactors at Chalk River Laboratories were to replace most of the radioisotope production at the ageing NRU reactor. Intended to be the world's first reactors dedicated exclusively to medical isotope production, the reactors could have supplied the entire global demand for molybdenum-99, iodine-131, iodine-125 and xenon-133.
The government has an Isotope Technology Acceleration Program (ITAP) to promote R&D on non-reactor based isotope production, particularly through the Medical Isotope Program (MIP). However, a key finding of the Natural Resources Canada Expert Panel on Medical Isotope Production was that reactors represent the best primary option for producing Mo-99. Canada Light Source Inc (CLS) in Saskatoon is using a linear accelerator to bombard Mo-100 targets with X-rays, and has produced some Mo-99 for the MIP.
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