[Music]
if you speak to my friends they tell you
I’m an unlikely candidate to be someone
urging others to have faith in humanity
I’m perhaps a bit too preoccupied with
some of the disappointing behavior that
we see around us but there is one place
my workplace that does cause me to have
hope in the future generations this is
where I work
it’s the nru reactor at Canadian nuclear
laboratories it’s a nuclear reactor used
for science
who knew that Canada’s most productive
science facility was tucked away in the
forest a short drive up the valley from
our nation’s capital well two issues
right away there first how can I make
such a bold claim that nru is the most
productive science facility we’ve ever
built in Canada and second perhaps more
fundamentally what does NIU stand for
nru is national research universal an
odd but an apt name for a facility that
has made substantial contributions to
every area of scientific endeavor
physics chemistry biology engineering
[Music]
but those of us who work there just call
it nru as for its contributions to
Canada and the world
NIU provided the knowledge that launched
and sustained two multi-billion
international industries for decades one
in the energy sector and the other in
the health sector it has directly
impacted hundreds of millions of
people’s lives and enabled a new branch
of science to come into existence which
was recognized with a Nobel Prize more
about all of that in a minute so how is
a nuclear reactor used for science what
good is splitting atoms do
well I learned in high school that
everything even me everything is made of
atoms and atoms are the fundamental
building blocks and there are 92 of
those building blocks and we give them
different names carbon hydrogen iron and
each atom has in its Center and nucleus
made of protons and neutrons and
electrons spinning around the outside
and that’s all the world nuclear means
it just means about the nucleus
chemistry is sticking atoms together you
have two H’s and an O and you make an
h2o but nuclear science is concerned
with what’s inside the atom a nuclear
reactor of course is reliant on one atom
overall and that is the heaviest one
that you’ll find in nature uranium and
uranium has a special property if you
add a neutron to a uranium it’s too
heavy it cannot stay in that state it
wants to split apart and those two
halves are other atoms about half the
size of a uranium atom and out comes
some energy and two or three neutrons
well if we needed a neutron to make the
split and now we’ve made two or three
more there you can go on and make other
uranium split and on and on we’ll girl
there’s only two other features needed
and then we’ve got everything we need to
know to make a nuclear reactor the first
is that those neutrons are going too
fast when they first come out and they
they need to bounce into other lighter
atoms to scrub off some speed and
hydrogen would be perfect we know
there’s a lot of hydrogen in h2o right
and the last thing we need a material
that will soak up neutrons when we want
to stop the reaction no neutrons
no more splits and really that’s all
that’s in NR you although you saw it was
a vast science facility it’s the size of
a cathedral at its heart it’s a simple
machine we have some uranium in long
metal rods those are in a tank of water
and we have some other rods made of
cobalt in this case and they soak up the
neutrons when we want to stop the
reactor
when the designers of NIU back in the
50s designed and brought the facility
into operation in 1957 they didn’t try
to second-guess what it would be used
for they wanted it to be a flexible
versatile machine so that people could
imagine dream up new types of
experiments and use it to break
frontiers they didn’t try to guess it
was built to be a universal science
facility and I used full of holes you
don’t think of nuclear reactors being
full of holes but then ru is and that’s
because the designers wanted scientists
to get access to the core and use it to
do great things and I’m always amazed
when I hear the stories of innovation
that have come out from NIU and I have
three of those stories that I think will
really illustrate the point the first
thing that happened I must say I don’t
want to imply that innovation started
just when NIU became available there
were other research reactors before that
and smart inventive people use those as
soon as they were available but NIU as
the pinnacle it’s a real culmination of
all that’s gone before so when those
earlier reactors and then NIU became
available one thought that came up in
scientist Minds was now we can make
isotopes an isotope is just a heavier
version of an atom in the nucleus of an
atom there’s protons and neutrons
neutrons don’t do much they just make an
atom heavier and the neutron heavier
Ataman there are three atoms of hydrogen
they’re all hydrogen they’re all
different weights so why did scientists
want to make isotopes we’ve got a big
tank of water making trillions of
neutrons in NIU
you can add neutrons to atoms and make
isotopes why some isotopes are not happy
in their state they want to spit out
some energy and settle to a more stable
state and that energy is an x-ray and
there were two really clever ideas
emerging about how we could use an x-ray
and today in nru we make some isotopes
and they shine a very low energy a
gentle x-ray and they can be injected in
patience and the x-rays shining out to
the patient can be used to make a
diagnostic image a cat scan and in a
regular year we can make enough for five
million cats cats helping all those
people in their families we make other
isotopes like cobalt 60 that shines a
very very strong x-ray and it will kill
anything that it shines on and back in
the 50s when this technology was first
contemplated here in Canada engineers
worked with medical professionals to
design machines that Shawn that x-ray
onto tumors in cancer patients to kill
the cancerous tissue and treat cancer
patients in the first cancer therapies
were performed here in Canada in the 50s
and that technology was sold around the
world and today the cobalt that we make
in NIU every year treats 60 million
cancer cancer patients in 80 countries
this is our 60th anniversary I said we
started in 1957 and we’ve done the math
and over its life NIU has made well over
well over half a billion patient
treatments half a billion there was
another entirely different idea taking
shape in some people’s minds when NIU
became available and the reactors that
preceded it and that was can you use a
nuclear reaction to boil water like
steam drive a turbine turn a generator
and make electricity the challenge with
that technology is in the center of the
nuclear reactor the conditions are very
harsh and they’re not like anything you
see anywhere on earth so how would you
choose the right materials to build that
structure the investment in a nuclear
power reactor these machines are much
much bigger than nru or a research
reactor the investment is very big it’s
rather like a hydro dam it costs a huge
amount of money to build but once you’ve
built it it then just makes cheap
reliable clean electricity
decades and decades unless you’ve chosen
the wrong materials to make the reactor
from in which case it doesn’t last and
your investment is wasted
so in nru scientists can get a long
stick and literally put 25 samples of
different bits of steel on the end and
put that into the reactor and leave it
there for a while and let them
experience those harsh conditions pull
it out a year later and then do
experiments on those 25 steels which
steel was the best which retained its
strength which is the best candidate for
building of the big power reactors and
nru the knowledge gained from
experiments there have sustained
Canada’s nuclear industry over those
decades if you’re a government trying to
plan climate change goals greenhouse gas
reduction goals and you have a domestic
technology that makes a sixth of the
country’s electricity well over half of
Ontario’s electricity all with zero
greenhouse gas that’s a huge boon just
because a few people answered some
practical questions using the
capabilities of nru so the third story
is about this guy Burt Brockhaus Burt
was a young man in world war ii and
worked as a sonar operator and then in
the 50’s found himself at shore proved
elaborate orys where the earlier reactor
was operating already and nru was coming
into operation and he dreamt up machines
that could get neutrons shining out of
holes I said there was holes in the side
of nru direct those neutrons and shine
them onto samples of material and by
measuring how the neutrons scattered
from the sample he was able to to gain
fundamental knowledge about how
materials were knit together at the
molecular level
an astounding technique and here’s the
magic it can be used on anything with
that technique you can look at metals
polymers glasses ceramics gels
semiconductors and
and so many of the innovations of the
20th and 21st century rely on advanced
materials burst was recognized with the
Nobel Prize in 1994 and by that time he
shared the prize with cliff Shaw from
the USA and by 94 this technique these
instruments were installed in research
reactors in every developed country
because it is such a powerful technique
for understanding materials and making
new innovation and it’s those stories of
innovation from history but the ones I
hear about me every week the dime at
work that make me such a proud so proud
to be a member of the NIU team and here
are some of the members of that team we
run the facility 24/7 Christmas Day New
Year’s shifts
we can’t ever all be in one photograph
but because we operate nru today every
day of the week a PhD student a
professor a researcher a scientist comes
through our front door with a new idea
for an experiment to give Canada
thousands of years of electricity from
thorium fuel or develop the next
generation of medical isotope products
or develop a new material which well
which will what enable a new type of
heart implant or a supersonic train or a
faster computer I don’t know but those
first two examples are real thousands of
years of electricity from thorium and
the next generation of medical isotopes
those experiments have been in nru this
year so we’ve proved that this works get
a powerful capable scientific tool and
put it in the hands of imaginative
scientists and great things will happen
as a country we made an investment a big
investment to build nru but not out of
proportion with the things government
spends money on the same as a big city
hospital law
four or five fighter jets and that
investment has paid us back many times
over half a billion patient treatments
billions of tons of greenhouse gas
avoided nru will end operation next year
in 2018 in the spring and our 60 years
will will stand as a proud record of all
that we’ve done but I’m confident that
the coming generation of scientists
though starting their careers today will
continue to astound us with new
innovation as we put into their hands
capable powerful scientific tools like
nru
[Applause]
if you speak to my friends they tell you
I’m an unlikely candidate to be someone
urging others to have faith in humanity
I’m perhaps a bit too preoccupied with
some of the disappointing behavior that
we see around us but there is one place
my workplace that does cause me to have
hope in the future generations this is
where I work
it’s the nru reactor at Canadian nuclear
laboratories it’s a nuclear reactor used
for science
who knew that Canada’s most productive
science facility was tucked away in the
forest a short drive up the valley from
our nation’s capital well two issues
right away there first how can I make
such a bold claim that nru is the most
productive science facility we’ve ever
built in Canada and second perhaps more
fundamentally what does NIU stand for
nru is national research universal an
odd but an apt name for a facility that
has made substantial contributions to
every area of scientific endeavor
physics chemistry biology engineering
[Music]
but those of us who work there just call
it nru as for its contributions to
Canada and the world
NIU provided the knowledge that launched
and sustained two multi-billion
international industries for decades one
in the energy sector and the other in
the health sector it has directly
impacted hundreds of millions of
people’s lives and enabled a new branch
of science to come into existence which
was recognized with a Nobel Prize more
about all of that in a minute so how is
a nuclear reactor used for science what
good is splitting atoms do
well I learned in high school that
everything even me everything is made of
atoms and atoms are the fundamental
building blocks and there are 92 of
those building blocks and we give them
different names carbon hydrogen iron and
each atom has in its Center and nucleus
made of protons and neutrons and
electrons spinning around the outside
and that’s all the world nuclear means
it just means about the nucleus
chemistry is sticking atoms together you
have two H’s and an O and you make an
h2o but nuclear science is concerned
with what’s inside the atom a nuclear
reactor of course is reliant on one atom
overall and that is the heaviest one
that you’ll find in nature uranium and
uranium has a special property if you
add a neutron to a uranium it’s too
heavy it cannot stay in that state it
wants to split apart and those two
halves are other atoms about half the
size of a uranium atom and out comes
some energy and two or three neutrons
well if we needed a neutron to make the
split and now we’ve made two or three
more there you can go on and make other
uranium split and on and on we’ll girl
there’s only two other features needed
and then we’ve got everything we need to
know to make a nuclear reactor the first
is that those neutrons are going too
fast when they first come out and they
they need to bounce into other lighter
atoms to scrub off some speed and
hydrogen would be perfect we know
there’s a lot of hydrogen in h2o right
and the last thing we need a material
that will soak up neutrons when we want
to stop the reaction no neutrons
no more splits and really that’s all
that’s in NR you although you saw it was
a vast science facility it’s the size of
a cathedral at its heart it’s a simple
machine we have some uranium in long
metal rods those are in a tank of water
and we have some other rods made of
cobalt in this case and they soak up the
neutrons when we want to stop the
reactor
when the designers of NIU back in the
50s designed and brought the facility
into operation in 1957 they didn’t try
to second-guess what it would be used
for they wanted it to be a flexible
versatile machine so that people could
imagine dream up new types of
experiments and use it to break
frontiers they didn’t try to guess it
was built to be a universal science
facility and I used full of holes you
don’t think of nuclear reactors being
full of holes but then ru is and that’s
because the designers wanted scientists
to get access to the core and use it to
do great things and I’m always amazed
when I hear the stories of innovation
that have come out from NIU and I have
three of those stories that I think will
really illustrate the point the first
thing that happened I must say I don’t
want to imply that innovation started
just when NIU became available there
were other research reactors before that
and smart inventive people use those as
soon as they were available but NIU as
the pinnacle it’s a real culmination of
all that’s gone before so when those
earlier reactors and then NIU became
available one thought that came up in
scientist Minds was now we can make
isotopes an isotope is just a heavier
version of an atom in the nucleus of an
atom there’s protons and neutrons
neutrons don’t do much they just make an
atom heavier and the neutron heavier
Ataman there are three atoms of hydrogen
they’re all hydrogen they’re all
different weights so why did scientists
want to make isotopes we’ve got a big
tank of water making trillions of
neutrons in NIU
you can add neutrons to atoms and make
isotopes why some isotopes are not happy
in their state they want to spit out
some energy and settle to a more stable
state and that energy is an x-ray and
there were two really clever ideas
emerging about how we could use an x-ray
and today in nru we make some isotopes
and they shine a very low energy a
gentle x-ray and they can be injected in
patience and the x-rays shining out to
the patient can be used to make a
diagnostic image a cat scan and in a
regular year we can make enough for five
million cats cats helping all those
people in their families we make other
isotopes like cobalt 60 that shines a
very very strong x-ray and it will kill
anything that it shines on and back in
the 50s when this technology was first
contemplated here in Canada engineers
worked with medical professionals to
design machines that Shawn that x-ray
onto tumors in cancer patients to kill
the cancerous tissue and treat cancer
patients in the first cancer therapies
were performed here in Canada in the 50s
and that technology was sold around the
world and today the cobalt that we make
in NIU every year treats 60 million
cancer cancer patients in 80 countries
this is our 60th anniversary I said we
started in 1957 and we’ve done the math
and over its life NIU has made well over
well over half a billion patient
treatments half a billion there was
another entirely different idea taking
shape in some people’s minds when NIU
became available and the reactors that
preceded it and that was can you use a
nuclear reaction to boil water like
steam drive a turbine turn a generator
and make electricity the challenge with
that technology is in the center of the
nuclear reactor the conditions are very
harsh and they’re not like anything you
see anywhere on earth so how would you
choose the right materials to build that
structure the investment in a nuclear
power reactor these machines are much
much bigger than nru or a research
reactor the investment is very big it’s
rather like a hydro dam it costs a huge
amount of money to build but once you’ve
built it it then just makes cheap
reliable clean electricity
decades and decades unless you’ve chosen
the wrong materials to make the reactor
from in which case it doesn’t last and
your investment is wasted
so in nru scientists can get a long
stick and literally put 25 samples of
different bits of steel on the end and
put that into the reactor and leave it
there for a while and let them
experience those harsh conditions pull
it out a year later and then do
experiments on those 25 steels which
steel was the best which retained its
strength which is the best candidate for
building of the big power reactors and
nru the knowledge gained from
experiments there have sustained
Canada’s nuclear industry over those
decades if you’re a government trying to
plan climate change goals greenhouse gas
reduction goals and you have a domestic
technology that makes a sixth of the
country’s electricity well over half of
Ontario’s electricity all with zero
greenhouse gas that’s a huge boon just
because a few people answered some
practical questions using the
capabilities of nru so the third story
is about this guy Burt Brockhaus Burt
was a young man in world war ii and
worked as a sonar operator and then in
the 50’s found himself at shore proved
elaborate orys where the earlier reactor
was operating already and nru was coming
into operation and he dreamt up machines
that could get neutrons shining out of
holes I said there was holes in the side
of nru direct those neutrons and shine
them onto samples of material and by
measuring how the neutrons scattered
from the sample he was able to to gain
fundamental knowledge about how
materials were knit together at the
molecular level
an astounding technique and here’s the
magic it can be used on anything with
that technique you can look at metals
polymers glasses ceramics gels
semiconductors and
and so many of the innovations of the
20th and 21st century rely on advanced
materials burst was recognized with the
Nobel Prize in 1994 and by that time he
shared the prize with cliff Shaw from
the USA and by 94 this technique these
instruments were installed in research
reactors in every developed country
because it is such a powerful technique
for understanding materials and making
new innovation and it’s those stories of
innovation from history but the ones I
hear about me every week the dime at
work that make me such a proud so proud
to be a member of the NIU team and here
are some of the members of that team we
run the facility 24/7 Christmas Day New
Year’s shifts
we can’t ever all be in one photograph
but because we operate nru today every
day of the week a PhD student a
professor a researcher a scientist comes
through our front door with a new idea
for an experiment to give Canada
thousands of years of electricity from
thorium fuel or develop the next
generation of medical isotope products
or develop a new material which well
which will what enable a new type of
heart implant or a supersonic train or a
faster computer I don’t know but those
first two examples are real thousands of
years of electricity from thorium and
the next generation of medical isotopes
those experiments have been in nru this
year so we’ve proved that this works get
a powerful capable scientific tool and
put it in the hands of imaginative
scientists and great things will happen
as a country we made an investment a big
investment to build nru but not out of
proportion with the things government
spends money on the same as a big city
hospital law
four or five fighter jets and that
investment has paid us back many times
over half a billion patient treatments
billions of tons of greenhouse gas
avoided nru will end operation next year
in 2018 in the spring and our 60 years
will will stand as a proud record of all
that we’ve done but I’m confident that
the coming generation of scientists
though starting their careers today will
continue to astound us with new
innovation as we put into their hands
capable powerful scientific tools like
nru
[Applause]
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