Neutron Beam Research
The NRU reactor is home to Canada's national facility for neutron scattering: the NRC Canadian Neutron Beam Centre. Neutron scattering is a technique where a beam of neutrons shines through a sample of material, and depending on how the neutrons scatter from the atoms inside, scientists can determine many details about the crystal structure and movements of the atoms within the sample.
An early pioneer of the technique was Bertram Brockhouse who built some of the early neutron spectrometers in the NRX and NRU reactors and was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in physics for the development of neutron spectroscopy.
The NRC Canadian Neutron Beam Centre continues that field of science today, operating as an open-access user facility allowing scientists from across Canada and around the world to use neutrons in their research programs.
It is common for a developed country to support a national facility for neutron scattering and one for X-ray scattering. The two types of facility provide complementary information about materials.
An unusual feature of the NRU reactor as Canada's national neutron source is its multipurpose design: able to manufacture isotopes, and support nuclear R&D at the same time as it supplies neutrons to the suite of neutron scattering instruments.
The NRU reactor is sometimes (incorrectly) characterized as simply a nuclear research facility. Neutron scattering however is not nuclear research, it is materials research. Neutrons are an ideal probe of materials including metals, alloys, biomaterials, ceramics, magnetic materials, minerals, polymers, composites, glasses, nano-materials and many others. The neutron scattering instruments at the NRC Canadian Neutron Beam Centre are used by universities and industries from across Canada every year because knowledge of materials is important for innovation in many sectors.
Read more about this topic: National Research Universal Reactor
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