Overview

Overview
This consultation meeting will gather the Canadian neutron beam community to deliberate, finalize, and build consensus around the recommendations of the Canadian Neutron Long Range Plan (LRP) Panel. The LRP process is a consultative process currently underway to develop a plan for implementation of the national neutron strategy. The resulting plan, the Neutron LRP, will be a comprehensive plan for the next decade to rebuild Canada’s capabilities for research with neutron beams, maintain Canadian leadership in these fields, enable Canadians to address major social and economic challenges, and maximize benefits to Canada. 

Participants
All Canadian neutron beam users are invited to attend. Representatives of Canadian institutions, including government, industry, and universities, that are interested in neutron beams are invited. Representatives of foreign neutron facilities open to partnership with Canada are also invited. 

Why is a Neutron LRP needed?
The challenges that Canada face in protecting the health and safety of our communities, ensuring a clean and sustainable environment, and providing high quality, meaningful employment all require a complete twenty-first century scientific toolkit —including neutron beams—for developing materials that underpin technology solutions. Neutron beams are versatile and irreplaceable tools for materials research, and Canadians have led in this field, applying them to make major socio-economic impacts in these priority areas for several decades. The impacts range from saving hundreds of millions of dollars by reducing downtimes at Canada’s fleet of nuclear power stations, to bolstering Canada’s scientific reputation through Nobel Prize-winning science.

While other nations have invested about $10B in research infrastructure to provide neutron beams since 2000, Canada’s primary neutron source at Chalk River closed in 2018. Without neutron beam infrastructure, Canada’s scientific toolkit is incomplete. 

Canada is just beginning to rebuild its neutron beam infrastructure. Canadian universities are leading the way by developing the national neutron strategy, creating Neutrons Canada, and securing funds for a $50M project that will (1) develop the neutron beam user laboratory at the McMaster Nuclear Reactor and (2) establish short-term partnerships with two foreign neutron sources. 

The national neutron strategy calls for a $25-million-per-year program for operations of national infrastructure for research and development with neutron beams, including operating domestic facilities, forging more partnerships with world-leading neutron beam facilities, and developing new neutron sources for the long term.

The Neutron LRP will recommend how this program should be allocated, in addition to detailing any other recommendations for making sure that Canadian investment in neutron beams-reliant research will be successful, and that benefit to Canada will be maximized.

Register for the meeting as soon as possible by using the button below.