From Today I Found Out.

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At 3:45 PM on September 5, 1945, history was made at Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario as the Zero Energy Experimental Pile or ZEEP achieved criticality for the first time. In that moment, Canada entered the nuclear age – only the second country after the United States to do so. While rarely thought of as a leader in nuclear technology, Canada has long punched above its weight. During the Second World War, uranium from Canadian mines fuelled the first atomic bombs, while many Canadian scientists like Dr. Louis Slotin were intimately involved in the Manhattan Project. After the war, Dr. Harold Johns of the University of Saskatchewan developed cobalt therapy for the treatment of cancer, making Canada a world leader in the production and use of medical isotopes. But perhaps Canada’s greatest achievement in the nuclear field is the CANDU, a highly-innovative nuclear reactor that ranks among the safest and most economical in the world. When first introduced in the late 1960s, CANDU seemed poised to revolutionize the nuclear power industry, but due to various political and economic factors only a handful of units were ever built. In this era of looming climate catastrophe, where nuclear power looks to be the only viable means of producing clean, reliable electricity, it is worth asking: what made the CANDU so special, and why did it fail to catch on? This is the fascinating story of Canada’s forgotten super-reactor.

Author: Gilles Messier
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Host: Simon Whistler
Producer: Samuel Avila

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