TVB Associates was pleased to have a central strategic role supporting McMaster University in a national proposal for a $47M project for infrastructure for neutron beams. This project, entitled “Building a Future for Canadian Neutron Scattering”, was supported by 17 universities across Canada, and has been fully funded.
As reported earlier, the Canada Foundation for Innovation awarded its contribution to the project, $14.25M, in March 2021 through its 2020 Innovation Fund competition.
This federal contribution was recently matched by a further $14.05M in provincial funds from the Governments of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. As the host province, Ontario contributed the largest share at $10.35M. TVB Associates played a critical role in the request to Ontario.
This project will also benefit from $19M in in-kind contributions from McMaster University, Canadian partners such as AECL and the Fedoruk Centre, and foreign partners such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the NIST Center for Neutron Research in the United States, bringing the total project value to $47.3M.
Project Summary
“Building a Future for Canadian Neutron Scattering” is a national project that will enable research and innovation in areas such as materials for clean energy technology, materials for structural integrity of reliability-critical components of vehicles or nuclear power plants, biomaterials for understanding and combating disease, and materials for information technology.
Neutron beams are versatile and irreplaceable 21st century tools for studying materials and are needed by a Canadian research community that includes about 100 principal investigators from over 30 universities. Access to neutron beams is urgently needed following the recent closure of the Canadian Neutron Beam Centre and the expiry of Canada’s only agreement for access to a foreign neutron beam facility. Now, the McMaster Nuclear Reactor is Canada’s only major neutron source, and this project will complete its neutron beam lab by adding three neutron beamlines. To enable experiments that require high neutron brightness, the project will build partnerships with two world leading neutron beam facilities in the US.
Potential benefits of the research include technologies to reduced greenhouse gas emissions; enhanced reliability and competitiveness of Canadian nuclear power and auto parts manufacturing industries; knowledge to aid the fight against cancer, Alzheimer’s, and antibiotic resistance; and knowledge of quantum materials that could enable breakthroughs in information technology devices.
Author: Daniel Banks, President, TVB Associates Inc.
Photo: Celebration Cake for funding of “Building a Future for Canadian Neutron Scattering” (Photo by TVB Associates)