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PHOTO: ATOMIC ENERGY OF CANADA LTD. Enterjng The Nuclear Age by Jeremy Whitlock

In September 1945, a month after the end of World War II, Canadians were still getting used to the idea that the Atomic Age had begun. Two American bombs of unimagined power had ended the hostilities, followed shortly by a statement from the Canadian government that Canada had proudly played an "intimate" role in their development.

Patriotism aside, it was true that the Hiroshima bombing. Canada had participated in the Anglo• For Lew Kowarski it was a moment of American atomic bomb program, and personal closure. Five years earlier the had, by accident of geology and geogra• burly Russian-born scientist had escaped phy, come out of the war with the world's France aboard a collier on the eve of Nazi second largest nuclear infrastructure. The occupation, with almost the world's time would soon come to decide what to entire supply of "heavy water"-about PHOTO: ATOMIC ENERGY OF CANADA LTD. do with it, but for now, a month after the 200 litres in 26 cans. Three months From top: Workers use radio• war's biggest secret was out, the focus before that the precious scientific cargo was still very much on getting the job had been spirited out of Norway, just active cobalt created in the NRU done. ahead of the German invasion of that reactor at Chalk River, Ont.; Here, in a clearing on the wooded country. Once safely on English soil, nuclear research has been a Ontario shoreline of the Ottawa River Kowarski and fellow refugee scientist about two hours west of Ottawa, Canada Hans von Halban continued their experi• benefit to cancer therapy. would become the second nation to con- ments with uranium and heavy water struct a working . It was that they had pioneered in France. Sept. 5, almost a month to the day after By an extraordinary convergence of

m Legion Magazine, September/October 2003 ---~._------././ Features /- .- . and a wooden boardwalk to the beach. V public buildings between April I and Greenwich Dunes Trail is rated at moder• Oct. 15. However, trained guide dogs are ate difficulty. The 4.5 km Tlaqatik Trail An observation tower with outside stair allowed. and the 1.25-kilometre Havre Saint-Pierre access rewards climbers with a cardio• The drive from Charlottetown to Trail are rated' easy', with the latter being vascular workout and a panoramic view Greenwich is approximately 70 kilo• wheelchair accessible. Because of the of dunes, beach" ocean and sky. metres. Take Route 2 east through the fragile nature of the dunes, visitors are Swimming is supervised only between village of St. Peters then. onto Route asked to stay on the trails and designated late June and mid-August, so an off-sea• 3l3-also known as the Greenwich beach access points and not trample veg• son visit in the brisk spring orfall breezes Road-to the parking lot. For the latest etation. Park studies have shown that it makes land-based activities most attrac• information, call 902-961-2514 or visit can take as few as 10 footsteps through tive at Greenwich. the Web site http://www.parkscanada. the same area to destroy protective plant If you listen as you walk along the gcc.ca/pei. cover which leads to erosion that scars shore at Greenwich, you may hear' the the delicate dune habitat. phenomenon of whistling or singing The Greenwich Interpretation Centre The Dunes Trail goes through fields sand. Musical sand is a natural art that Walk into the Interpretation Centre from with a view of the community of St. happens on beaches and in deserts the paved parking lot and walk onto a Peters, then an evergreen forest and a worJdwide. In dry weather, the top layer clear floor over a 3-D topographical floating boardwalk over Bowley Pond. of sand near the water's edge can emit a model of the Greenwich Peninsula, walking further, you reach the coastal fleeting harmonic sound when walked on St. Peters Bay and the surrounding area. dune ridge where several side trails are or moved by a traiJing stick. This is much This, of course, is the only way you' available to get a closer look at the shift• more melodic than the crunching sound should ever walk on the dunes! More ing sand system. Another designated you hear underfoot when walking on than 20 exhibits cover the cultural and pathway leads down to the beach. hard, granular snow in very cold weath• natural history of the region, including Chances are, when you get there, you will er. Caused by the rubbing together of fair• Time Line, which charts 10,000 years of be alone. Nor do you have to be the out• ly smooth and uniform grains, the sands habitation and displays on-site artifacts. doorsy type to see the dunes because lose their singing voice as you move Before leaving for the dunes and beach, paths are well marked and there are no away from the shoreline to the upper stay and watch the 12-minute multimedia arduous uphill climbs. wave limit of the beach. presentation on local human history Nature is the attraction of the Bays and called Wind, Sea and Sand, the Story of Day-Use Facilities Dunes Region of Kings County. Green• Greenwich and test your naturalist skills Sustainable development is the key wich offers breathtaking views and with the Shell Game, Shorebird Challenge design concept at Greenwich. Energy uncrowded beaches removed from other and Dune Plant quizzes. comes from wind, of which there is a busy Island attractions. The dunes pro• plentiful supply, and soJar power. vide an additional buffer that heightens Exploring The Hiking Trails Composting toilets eliminate the need for the sense of serenity. Three trails, with interpretative signage a traditional sewer system. The day-use Still unaffected by heavy traffic and explaining natural and cultural history, area has washrooms and change rooms shoreline development, Greenwich sits in are available at Greenwich. The 4.5 km plus exterior showers, a picnic shelter solitude .•

PHOTO: TOURISM PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND/JOHN SYLVESTER A couple enjoys a quiet stroll along the beach at Greenwich. Legion Magazine, September/October 2003 II ••••• '" Features

PHOTO: ATOMIC ENERGY OF CANADA LTD. A cut-away drawing of the ZEEP reactol~ Canada's first nuclear reactor and the first in the world to operate outside the united States. The reactor started up in September 1945.

history, the most spectacular .scientific new weapon of immense destructive Instead of heavy water, Laurence discovery of the century, the splitting of power, and if that were true, then so did opted for carbon, a less efficient but the atom (or fission), had been discov• the Nazis. One outcome of this suspicion cheaper and more available substitute. ered just prior to the outbreak of the was a 1943 commando raid on the With 10 tonnes of the black, messy stuff largest global conflict in history, and Norwegian hydro plant that generated (in the form of petroleum coke), and 450 the discovery was made in Germany. the heavy water. kilograms of black uranium powder bor• Furthermore, many of the practical Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in rowed from Eldorado Gold Mines Ltd. in advances in studying this new energy Ottawa, deep within the gothic laborato• the Northwest Territories, Laurence con• source were made in France, and now all ries of the National Research Council on ducted his experiments from 1940-42. In of that was in German hands. Sussex Drive, Canadian scientist George the summers he had help from Professor All, that is, except Kowarski, Halban, Laurence closely followed Kowarski and B.W. Sargent of Queen's University in and their heavy water. It was known Halban's work against the descending Kingston, Ont. that uranium fission could generate a lot secrecy of WW 11.By day, Laurence was The Holy Grail of this type of work of heat, and that heavy water (a rare responsible for teaching radiography to was a self-sufficient nuclear reaction; form of regular water) could help Canada's wartime aircraft industry, but that is, one in which uranium atoms achieve this. Increasingly, the British 'in his spare time he worked towards continuously split each other in a chain government became convinced that building one of the world's first nuclear reaction that requires no outside help. they possessed the energy source for a reactors. With purer materials and a full-time Legion Magazine, September/October 2003 II / Features 11 •••• expected the project to be finished in time to contribute to the war. Indeed, it was July 1944-a month after D-Day-when a site for the pilot plant was chosen about two hours west of Ottawa, seven kilometres north of the vil• lage of Chalk River on the shores of the Ottawa River. In utter secrecy a complete scientific lab was built from scratch, along with a town site-Deep River-for its workers a few kilometres to the west. Both sites were built by Defense Industries Ltd., with the familiar white and green colour scheme of Canadian military installations. Petawawa Works, as it was known during construction, looked like nothing more than an extension of nearby Canadian Forces Base Petawawa. This was, of course, the intention. Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories was to host a 20-million-watt reactor called the NRX, for National Research X-Metal (X-Metal being the wartime code for ura• nium; later the name was changed to' National Research Experimental, but it PHOTO: ATOMIC ENERGY OF CANADA LTD. would always be known simply as NRX). The Chalk Rjver Laboratories was established during WW II on the First, however, a smaller test reactor needed to be built, and this assignment Ottawa Rjver, about two hours west of Ottawa. went to Kowarski. Kowarski was one of the last of the effort, Laurence might have been the least in importance) proximity to the British team to come to Canada, now first in the world to achieve this, but that American effort, the choice was clear. lured by the chance to complete the quest honour went to on Dee. 2, A decision was made to host the British he had begun five years before in France: 1942, in Chicago. project in the fall of 1942. It was a defin• construction of a heavy-water reactor. He The Americans had awoken to the ing moment for Canada, shaping the named his reactor ZEEP, for Zero Energy grim prospect of a German atomic bomb, future direction of its science and tech• Experimental Pile. The "zero energy" was and were now putting their fullest nology infrastructure and thrusting it due to the reactor producing barely any wartime machinery behind the task of directly onto the world stage. heat; "pile" was the jargon for reactors in getting there first. All agreed that if the The British group was assigned to the those days, after Fermi built the first one Germans won this race, they'd win the National Research Council, and was in Chicago literally out of a pile of war, regardless of their standing else• joined by a number of Canadians led by graphite (carbon) blocks. where in the conflict. Laurence. Space was found in a building The construction of ZEEP dragged on Britain and the United States, each at the University of Montreal, in a suit• through the final days of the war, which with its own cadre of dispossessed ably cosmopolitan city. The Montreal ended in Europe in May 1945. Germany, European scientists, formed a top-secret Laboratory, as it became known, had the it turned out, was never close to building nuclear alliance that in demographic, task of designing a pilot heavy-water an atomic bomb. In July the Americans scope and intent could only have been nuclear reactor for producing . had made enough plutonium of their own conceivable during WW II. The world's Prior to the war, plutonium had only to secretly test the world's first atomic most brilliant minds were locked in a existed in trace amounts. Now it held a bomb in New Mexico. The world's sec• macabre race to build the perfect place alongside uranium as the miracle ond and third atomic bombs were weapon. fuel of the future. Interestingly, plutoni• dropped, less secretly, on Hiroshima and But there was more to it. Nuclear fis• um could only be created in great quan• Nagasaki in August 1945, and that ended sion was an' energy source of almost tities within a nuclear reactor, one exam• the hostilities with Japan. unlimited potential, both good and bad. ple of which was now the Montreal lab's Canada's first reactor, and the first one In a Faustian twist, the scientists were focus. outside the U.S., started up a month later. also building the energy source of a post• The task had military significance, but Born out of military expediency within a war industrial boom, or so many thought. the greatest concentration of scientific larger American context, Canada's nucle• Developing concerns over security and minds in Canadian history set about its ar lab was suddenly a leftover wartime industrial patents strained the Anglo• task with an eye on the other edge of the gift, fully staffed and ready to go. American relationship, and when the sword: NRC President c.J. Mackenzie On the books was the NRX reactor, British offered to move their group to later commented that the deciding factor already under construction. Never de• America to escape the European theatre in taking on the Montreal lab was the signed solely as a plutonium-producing of war, they were flatly refused. This is obvious long-term social and economic reactor, the NRXcame fully equipped for where Canada came in. A British colony significance of atomic energy. Canada scientific experiments, including a num• with an abundance of both water and was getting in "on the ground floor of a ber of "beam tubes" that permit streams uranium, plus skilled workers, open great technological process for the first of subatomic particles to leave the reac• space, natural resources, energy and (not time" in its history. Mackenzie never tor and impinge on test materials.

m Legion Magazine, September/October 2003 •••••Features When completed in 1947, NRXwas the had outstripped the NRC's original man• contractor for the Nuclear Power most powerful research reactor in the date, and a new crown corporation, Demonstration, NPD, project. General world. Canadian nuclear science defined Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., AECL,was Electric would provide the design work, the forefront of the art, and the little created with the sole purpose of pursuing as well as $2 million in funding. Ontario Canadian Pacific Rail station· in Chalk peaceful applications of Canadian nucle• Hydro would provide the plant site and all River welcomed the world's greatest ar research and development. At the time conventional (non-nuclear) equipment, scientists and other VIPs to the heart of of transfer from NRC to AECL, a much plus operate the plant. AECLwould pro• the Canadian Shield. more powerful research reactor was vide the balance of funding and own the Significantly, Canada did not pursue under construction, to be known as nuclear side of the plant. the development of atomic weaponry, National Research Universal or simply The site was on the Ottawa River, just despite being one of the three countries NRU. NRU started operation five years downstream from Ontario Hydro's mas• on Earth at the close of WW 11with the later in 1957, and continues today as the sive Des Joachims hydro-electric power know-how to do so. Canadian research workhorse for Canadian nuclear research station at Rolphton. reactors at Chalk River did turn out a rel• and radioisotope production. These were heady days, where design atively small amount of plutonium for the Also at the time of the handover to and development proceeded in parallel, American market until well into the Cold AECL,talks were under way regarding a and key late-breaking design decisions War, but the broader foresight of NRX's Canadian electricity-producing reactor. became the blueprint for future Candu designers, and the scientific vision of the Since the end of the war, electricity designs, as the technology became National Research Council, put Canada demand was skyrocketing in lock-step known as. The most significant of these soundly on a path to peaceful nuclear with the economy. Factories were spring• decisions was made in 1957, when the research and development. ing up, inner cities were becoming team redesigned the entire reactor to bet• One thing the NRX could do better increasingly electrified, and people were ter reflect the thinking on future Candu than any other reactor was make moving to larger homes in sprawling designs. Instead of having one large pres• radioisotopes; that is, materials that give subdivisions. sure vessel, as in American designs then off radiation for industrial, medical, or Utilities like Ontario Hydro were keep• being developed, NPD would assume the scientific purposes. In 1949, Dr. Harold ing pace for the time being with new horizontal, pressure-tube arrangement Johns of the University of Saskatchewan hydraulic developments, but soon all the characteristic of all Candu reactors to asked the NRC to make some radioac• large rivers would be used up. A fleet of this day. tive cobalt for use in cancer therapy. The new fossil-fuelled stations was planned, This would make NPD the first com• idea was novel at the time, and Johns led but for Ontario this meant buying expen• mercial power reactor to have a com• the field: the powerful energy from sive U.S. coal and choking its urban cen• pletely replaceable core, and the first to radioactive cobalt could be harnessed to tres with smog. Although refuel while operating at full power: both kill cancerous cells, without unduly was new and largely untested as an elec• remain signature Candu traits. affecting the surrounding non-cancer• tricity-producing energy source, it held This decision also ensured that the ous tissue. Elsewhere in Canada, Roy the promise of an abundant, domestic manufacturing phase would approach Errington of Eldorado Mining & Refining fuel supply, and no air emissions. Not 100 per cent Canadian content, since the Ltd., made a similar request to the NRC surprisingly, Ontario Hydro was interest• specifications now more closely matched at about the same time. The race for the ed in the wunderkind technology and domestic industrial capabilities at the "cobalt bomb" (as the media dubbed it) became a corporate partner in its devel• time. More importantly, it meant that in• was on. opment right from the start. ternational experience would be largely lt was a slow race, since even the most When it came time to decide on a type irrelevant to the Canadian nuclear pro• powerful reactor in the world took a full of power reactor, Canada naturally gram: the bold decision to be unique also two years to make sufficiently potent turned to its unique heavy-water reactor meant self-reliance. radioactive cobalt. The media was never• expertise. August 1951 saw the formal Construction continued, and as hurdles theless intrigued. In 1951, the cobalt for publication of An Atomic Power Proposal and delays were gradually overcome, an both parties was extracted from NRX,but by W.B. Lewis of Chalk River Lab• operations group, assembled under the Eldorado therapy unit was the first to oratories, followed by high-level meet• Lorne McConnell of Ontario Hydro, pre• be ready for clinical use. On Oct. 27, ings and a series of feasibility studies pared to take over and bring Canada into 1951, Dr. Ivan Smith's cancer clinic at involving the Ontario and federal govern• the Nuclear Power Age. Victoria Hospital in London, Ont., was ments, Ontario Hydro, and the NRC. NPDbegan supplying its first electricity the first in the world to treat a patient In 1954 the Nuclear Power Group was to the Ontario grid on June 4, 1962, and with radiation, using the Eldorado unit. established at , reached full power (about 20 megawatts, The Saskatchewan team followed with bringing together representatives from enough for 10,000 homes) on June 28. its first treatment 12 days later (the utilities, engineering companies, manu• Ontario Hydro would continue to operate Saskatchewan unit had an illustrious facturers, and AECL'sscientists to design the plant for the next 25 years, even as career, treating almost 7,000 patients a prototype heavy-water power reactor much larger Candu versions came on• over the next 21 years). that could compete with coal-fired plants. stream in Southern Ontario, dwarfing From those humble beginnings, Although "made-in-Canada" was the NPD's meagre contribution. Canada became a world leader in the overlying goal of this enterprise, "made• Today, Ontario is one of the largest production of medical radioisotopes and in-Ontario" largely resulted by default. nuclear-powered jurisdictions in the radiation therapy devices. Today, Ontario not only provided the industrial world, and Canada is a world leader in Canada-through a private supplier-is base for much of the manufacturing, but both the power reactor and medical responsible for 80 per cent of the world's was also the seat of Canada's nuclear radioisotope market. This is a remark• radioactive cobalt for industrial and engineering and scientific expertise, as able achievement for a largely empty medical use, as well as a majority of well as uranium production. country with a largely resource-based the market for other important medical In March 1955, Canada General economy, and equally remarkable is its isotopes. Electric in Peterborough, Ont., was lineage to a single decision of wartime By 1952 the operations at Chalk River selected from seven bids as the prime expediency .•

Legion Magazine, September/October 2003 lID