Chalk River Laboratories - History

History

The facility arose out of a 1942 collaboration between British and Canadian nuclear researchers which saw a Montreal research laboratory established under the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). By 1944 the Chalk River Labs were opened and in September, 1945 the facility saw the first nuclear reactor outside of the United States go operational (see Lew Kowarski). In 1946, NRC closed the Montreal laboratory and focused its resources on Chalk River.

In 1952, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) was created by the government to promote peaceful use of nuclear energy. AECL also took over operation of Chalk River from the NRC. Throughout the 1950s-2000s various nuclear research reactors have been operated by AECL for production of nuclear material for medical and scientific applications. The Labs produce about half of the world's medical isotopes. Despite the declaration of peaceful use, from 1955 to 1976, Chalk River facilities supplied about 250 kg of plutonium, in the form of spent reactor fuel, to the U.S. Department of Energy to be used in the production of nuclear weapons. (The bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, used about 6.4 kg of plutonium.)

Canada's first nuclear power plant, a partnership between AECL and Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, went online in 1962 near the site of Chalk River Labs. This reactor, Nuclear Power Demonstration (NPD), was a demonstration of the CANDU design, one of the world's safest and most successful nuclear reactors.