In the economic boom of the 1950s, Canada made a strategic gamble on its industrial future: it invested in developing the CANDU nuclear reactor. The CANDU was invented as a conscious decision to differentiate a product from its competition. Why…
Category: Food irradiation
Efficiency and symbolism in Canadian health care and medicine exports
In three and a half years, the operating license of the National Research Universal (NRU) nuclear reactor at Chalk River will expire. The NRU is a hugely important piece of research equipment, arguably Canada’s most important and certainly among its…
Nuclear medicine in Northern Ontario: another spinoff benefit from the CANDU program
Bruce Power, by far Canada’s single largest electricity generating plant, is also the biggest clean energy centre in the western hemisphere. The plant’s eight CANDU nuclear generating units are capable of cranking out 50 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year.…
Irradiated food keeps astronauts healthy and productive. Why can’t we earth dwellers have it?
Canada’s most famous son, astronaut Chris Hadfield, just blasted off to the International Space Station. He and his two fellow travelers will fly up to the ISS, where he will stay for the next five months—taking command, the first Canadian…
Nuclear “waste” is a solution to major public health problems
The alleged problem of nuclear “waste” is perhaps the most comically overblown aspect of the entire debate over nuclear energy. You would never know it from the usual media reports, but the “waste” product of nuclear reactors—that is to say,…