You can find a lot of things on Kijiji, but a neutron beam from a nuclear reactor isn\u2019t one of them.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why a team of Canadian scientists, headed up by Brock University Associate Professor of Physics Thad Harroun, is travelling to Sweden next week in hopes of striking up a partnership to access the European Spallation Source<\/a> (ESS), a neutron beam source facility being built there.<\/p>\n The meetings are meant to prepare for next year\u2019s closure of Canada\u2019s National Research Universal nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ont.<\/p>\n The 60-year-old reactor \u2014 the world\u2019s oldest operating research reactor \u2014 is slated to shut down in March 2018, after which Canadian and other scientists will no longer be able to use the highly specialized equipment in their experiments.<\/p>\n \u201cWe understand the decision, but we\u2019re a casualty of that decision,\u201d says Harroun, who is President of the Canadian Institute for Neutron Scattering<\/a> and a working group leader within the Canadian Neutron Initiative<\/a> (CNI).<\/p>\n Harroun says until another Canadian nuclear research facility is built, \u201cWe\u2019d like to press the Canadian government to put in a stop-gap emergency measure so that we can continue our research elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n That could mean the government purchasing \u2018beam time\u2019 at a foreign facility, as well providing upgrades to the nuclear reactor at McMaster University, says Harroun.<\/p>\n The CNI has its eye on Sweden\u2019s European Spallation Source, a highly sophisticated facility under construction in the southern Swedish city of Lund that is expected to \u201cboth greatly exceed and complement today’s leading neutron sources,\u201d says the ESS website.<\/p>\n The CNI has asked the federal government for $24 million over the next three years and $19 million a year between 2021 and 2029 to purchase experimental time and expertise at foreign laboratories such as the one in Sweden, as well as upgrading the nuclear reactor at McMaster.<\/p>\n Harroun says a neutron beam source is very important \u201cfor the basic discovery science that impacts everyone researching materials.\u201d<\/p>\n A neutron beam is made up of a stream of neutrons that chemists, biologists and physicists use to study their various samples of everything from metals and polymers to nano-structures, drugs and foods. The beams come from nuclear reactors and particle accelerators.<\/p>\n \u201cWe use it much like an X-ray beam to study the atomic structure of cell membranes,\u201d says Harroun, who uses neutron beams in his cell membrane research.<\/p>\n He says the beams are \u201cespecially suited\u201d for biological and other specimens that contain a lot of hydrogen.<\/p>\n \u201cNeutron beams have key advantages in scientific research: They\u2019re non-destructive; they penetrate through materials really well; and they\u2019re the only one that probes magnetic structures,\u201d says Harroun.<\/p>\n