Interview of Dr. George Craig Laurence, Canadian nuclear pioneer, by Bill Kehoe, for a CBC radio program THE ZEEP STORY. He speaks about the following: nuclear physics; the discovery of fusion in 1938; research on Uranium 235 by a group in Paris; the suppression of the research results during the Second World War; research carried out in Canada by the National Research Council (NRC); carbon moderator research; the research he did after NRC working hours; research on methods of X-rays of castings for the steel and aluminum industries; research on uranium; his proposal for uranium research early in 1940; the secrecy of the uranium research; research in the U.S.; graphite as a moderator; Enrico Fermi's research; Lawrence's visit to the researchers at Columbia University in 1940; atomic research in the U.S. at that time; the NRC scientists having to build their own equipment; the construction of the atomic pile at the NRC; the Montreal Nuclear Laboratory; research in Britain; the difficulty faced by the British researchers in 1942 because of German bombing; the attempt by Britain to move its nuclear research to the U.S.; the decision by the U.S. to refuse to allow the British to move its research there because most of the British researchers were refugees and the Americans were afraid that they would therefore be subject to German influence via their relatives; U.S. sanction of a joint U.S.-United Kingdom-Canadian laboratory on Canadian soil; the decision in September 1942 to set up a lab on a university campus in Montreal; the start of the research lab in February 1943; Lawrence's recruiting Canadian staff, of whom half of the 340 employees were Canadian; the expectation in 1943 in Montreal that the U.S. would delegate some of the research on the atomic bomb to the Montreal lab, but the U.S. deferred this; the Montreal work of a more general nature, such as a general review of reactor types; sinking morale at the Montreal lab as U.S. hostility became more apparent; the desire by British staff to return to the U.S.; the decision by the Quebec Conference of August 1943 to commissio n reactor research and development; the goal, up to 1942, to develop a reactor, rather than building an atomic bomb; some atomic bomb research by the Montreal lab between January and August 1943; by late 1943 the realization that the U.S. did not need the Montreal lab for war work because American research and development was well advanced; the relegation of the Montreal lab by late 1943 to working on a heavy water reactor in case the U.S. graphite reactors failed; the focus of the Montreal group on peacetime use of reactor technology; months of indecision following the Quebec Conference of August 1943; the continuing reluctance of the U.S. to cooperate, until the end of the war was in sight; the replacement of Austrian physicist Hans von Halban, the leader of the Montreal team, as a condition of getting the U.S. to cooperate; the arrival of John Cockcroft in early 1944 to head the Montreal lab; the decision on 13 April 1944 to build the National Research Experimental (NRX) reactor as a demonstration and as a source of plutonium; the hiring of Defence Industries Limited as the designer and operator of the reactor and of Fraser Brace Limited of Montreal as the primary contractor; the criteria for selecting the NRX site at Chalk River, Ontario, with its road and rail access, soft water, proper soil base, hydroelectric power, and isolation, but with its proximity to Ottawa and Montreal: Laurence's first visit to the Chalk River site; the expropriation by the federal government of 1,000 acres in the area; the Deep River town site, formerly known as Indian Point; the landscape of the area; the sense of adventure felt by staff who had to relocate to such a wilderness area; the planning of the town site by McGill University with local forestry students; the confidence by the lab staff that NRX would work, but that more data was needed on the fuel l attice, specifically the fuel size and spacing; the need for the Zero-Energy Experimental Pile (ZEEP)to check the accurac y of theoretical calculations; the advantages of ZEEP (it was relatively inexpensive and it did not need cooling and shielding); ZEEPs designers (L. Kowarski, C. Watson-Munro, George Klein and Don Mazur); praise for George Klein's simple but ingenious design, which led to ZEEP going critical within 14 months of Klein joining the project; the usefulness of ZEEP in testing other reactor designs; work on NRU; the decision in 1943 to give the Canadian lab permission to do reactor research and how this gave Canada a head start in the new nuclear industry; the role of NRC President C.J. Mackenzie and C.D. Howe in foreseeing Canada's nuclear industry; further recollections of the events of January 1943, specifically the frustration of the Montreal lab over lack of U.S. cooperation, followed by the decision to conduct more general atomic research; events after the Quebec Conference, when detailed decisions were left to the scientists and public servants until the April 1944 agreement to return non-British staff to the United Kingdom and put John Cockcroft in charge; the boost Cockcroft gave to the lab; giving Defence Industries Limited the contract by August 1944 to design NRX, a pilot plant for producing plutonium; the start of construction in September 1944 for CRNL; fear of a nuclear accident as one factor in choosing the isolated site; 20 sites considered, including Thunder Bay and St. Andrews; the planning of the Deep River site to ensure that there were proper facilities for employees such as schools; concerns by European employees over the remoteness of the site; the creation of the Deep River site; the plan for ZEEO to test the NRX design, in simpler form, to allow for the rearrangement of the fuel core; putting ZEEP into NRX; the reactivation in 1950 of ZEEP to test the NRU design and its continuous use after that; ZEEP as the first nuclear r eactor outside the U.S.; the lack of excitement when ZEEP went into operation because everything went smoothly, as predicte d; members of the ZEEP team, including Lew Kowarski, Charles Norman Watson-Munro , George Klein, Don Mazur, R.W. Fenning, G.W. Gilbert, G. Ferguson and E.P. Hincks; Laurence's work on the NRX design in Montreal; ZEEP's construction within 14 months; the completion of NRX in 1947; U.S. work on graphic reactors and how this was useful for NRX; more recollections by Laurence on the ability by C.D. Howe and C.J. Mackenzie to foresee that switching the focus of research in 1944 from the atomic bomb to nuclear reactors led to Canada's peacetime nuclear industry; NRX as a research reactor and his view that NRX was the best research reactor in the world; the choice of heavy water as a moderator; NRU and NPD; fast breeder reactors; Douglas Point and CANDU reactors. <1h 14mn>
