Of the five nations blessed by the World War II and postwar push for nuclear weapons to have a head start toward nuclear power, Canada was the only one never interested in atomic and hydrogen bombs. I’ve concluded the Canadians always desired the peaceful atom. Over the years, some historians and analysts have painted Canada’s early efforts as having a dark side. I think this useful historical summary implies something of that:
The wartime task given to the Canadian-United Kingdom team at the Montreal Laboratory was the pursuit of the heavy-water reactor route to plutonium and uranium-233 production. As a result, the early Chalk River laboratory included not only the NRX reactor but chemical plants for the separation of the plutonium and uranium-233 produced in it. These plants operated from 1948 until 1954. Final purification facilities were added in 1951 and 1952, and the plutonium separation plant was replaced by a much simpler one, based on ion exchange, in 1955. All facilities were shut down in 1957, when arrangements were made to sell used NRX and NRU fuel to the United States. Over the period 1948 to 1957, these facilities produced about 17 kg of plutonium and about 500 g of uranium-233. Most of the plutonium was recycled in NRX in plutonium-aluminum alloy fuel rods.
Hart, R. G. 1997. “Advanced fuel cycles.” In Canada Enters the Nuclear Age: A Technical History of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, edited by AECL, 352–66. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 360.
