CREATE-ing a national laboratory

Scientists at the Chalk River nuclear laboratories are asking the federal government to let them open their doors to more research and development with the private sector, something they believe will bring in more revenue.

Crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) currently runs the labs, and also markets CANDU reactors to generate electricity. The federal government has recently decided to privatize the reactor sales part of AECL, separating it from the research and development aspect of the corporation.

The Chalk River labs are located about 180km northwest Ottawa.

Prior to the split, the commercial activities of AECL dictated the research and development done at Chalk River. The lab did work on CANDU reactors because they were sold by AECL.

With part of AECL being privatized, some scientists at the lab believe a restructuring of their facility is necessary.

Current and former employees of Chalk River presented a proposal to the federal government, outlining a new way to run the lab.

It is called Chalk River Employees Ad-hoc Taskforce for a National Laboratory (CREATE) and suggests the work done at the lab no longer centre around AECL and the CANDU reactors.

A new direction

“They’ve opened up bidding for the commercial side of AECL. That process is in play now, but there has been no official comment from the government what their plans are for Chalk River,” says Gordon Tapp, a member of the CREATE team.

“So, I, and many others here, thought it was time to fill the void for the government and give them a few good ideas of where they should go.”

CREATE estimates it will cost between $400 million and $600 million a year to run the lab, and suggests the federal government provide 60 per cent of the funding. The other 40 per cent would come from companies who pay to use the lab, and they believe the purchaser of the CANDU operations will provide most of this new revenue.

The role of the lab has been shrinking since the mid-1990s, and I think the general feeling up here is that AECL is making these decisions, and we’re suffering for them.

“The role of the lab has been shrinking since the mid-1990s, and I think the general feeling up here is that AECL is making these decisions, and we’re suffering for them,” Tapp says.

“We see this restructuring as an opportunity to reverse that. So what we want to be is a national lab. We want to be a national resource for all Canadians.

Daniel Banks, a communications officer for the Canadian Neutron Beam Centre at the National Research Council – which runs one part of the Chalk River labs – says the facility has equipment that cannot be housed just anywhere.

“There are unique scientific tools here that can only exist with large scale infrastructure, so it’s not something you can just have at a university,” he says. “We’ve run this as a user facility, so scientists from universities and industries all over Canada will come to Chalk River to do certain experiments they will need to advance their research programs.”

Leaving AECL   

Inside the NRU reactor building. The top of the reactor is shown in the foreground.

Tapp says if the federal government accepts the CREATE proposal, academics will have even more access to the facilities, because it will no longer be controlled by AECL.

“When it comes to the research staff and the support staff, they would be seeing more interaction with academia and the private sector,” he says. “We would like to see the private sector and academia actually have a presence here on site.”

Dominic Ryan, president of the Canadian Institute for Neutron Scattering, says the decision to privatize part of AECL gives the government the perfect opportunity to fix shortcomings with the research and development done at Chalk River labs.

"It used to be more accessible. It used to be more open, but with this plan to privatize and chop things up into pieces, there is an opportunity to revive its mission as a national lab,” Ryan says

“Part of its mission would include building a new research reactor on the site, and you’d build it with a mandate to be open, rather than being a tool of AECL. We would build it as a piece of research infrastructure, which would be managed for the good of all Canadians instead of a single company.”

The federal government has not indicated whether it will accept the CREATE proposal, and Tapp says he is not sure what it will decide.

“On a good day, I’m very confident. On a more depressing day, not so much,” he says.

“I know the government is being faced with many fiscal pressures. So they have to make some very hard decisions in the next little while. But I think this is one of the decisions they can’t afford not to make.”

Chalk River Laboratories: Past and Present