Saskatchewan's nuclear innovation centre adds public outreach to its mandate

Saskatchewan's Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation (CCNI) is expanding the scope of its activities to include a public education role to provide a "reasoned tone" to the conversation of all things nuclear, just over a year into its seven-year mandate. The centre was funded in 2011 with $30 million over seven years to support research and training and hire faculty but its new role hopes to establish itself in a leadership role by engaging the public and other stakeholders in a major bid to boost the province's presence in nuclear science and engineering.

"We hope to develop a conversation about science and nuclear which includes a discussion of risk and risk management … This idea followed the original March 2011 decision to fund CCNI," says Dr John Root, CCNI's inaugural director. "(Nuclear) is a hot button topic. It can polarize and that's a real challenge … Some people have concerns, some are enthusiastic and a huge group in the middle don't know what to think or don't care."

"We spent the last summer talking and listening and we realized something quite creative could happen (to) create conditions for building a social licence and put Saskatchewan in a position of leadership."

CCNI has just launched its website (www.ccni.nu) and plans to hold live and on-line sessions to complement its outreach.

The bulk of Root's time has been devoted to building up CCNI's governance structure, establishing a board if directors and making key hires. On secondment from the National Research Council, he is returning to Chalk River ON where he heads the NRC's Canadian Neutron Beam Centre but will remain as CCNI's interim director for another year. "The board will need to hire a full time executive director but the process of calls for proposals (CFPs) has been established and go into operation in the fall," he says.

Designated as a subsidiary of the Univ of Saskatchewan, CCNI is aligned with the university's signature research area of energy and mineral resources - technology and public policy for a sustainable environment.

The CCNI will run a prototype, $500,000 CFP to draw attention to the new funding source and the opportunities it will provide . It will then issue a CFP worth $2 million every six months once fully operational.

"Nuclear innovation is not just nuclear mining. It's medicine, materials, energy and the environment. We're looking for jobs and companies … We're opening up a new channel beyond CANDU," says Root, referring to the nuclear reactor business recently sold by Atomic Energy of Canada to SNC Lavalin. "CCNI attracts expertise and informs decision-making."

Saskatchewan has already signed two MOUs with Hitachi-GE Nuclear which will see each side contribute $10 million towards research collaborations in nuclear medicine, materials science, nuclear safety and small reactor design (R$, September 13/11).

In the longer term, Saskatchewan still has its sights on a new research reactor, which will be needed to replace the aging NRU reactor at AECL's Chalk River facility. With the federal process to restructure AECL labs now in progress, Root says it's premature to actively pursue the issue. The NRU is licenced to operate until 2016 and AECL plans to apply for a further five-year extension. But it takes at least 10 years to take a reactor from design to operation, suggesting that a neutron gap is already a reality and will only get worse over time.

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