An interview with Dr. Ted Hsu, recently elected Liberal MP for Kingston and the Islands, about science policy in Canada

A must read interview with Dr. Ted Hsu, recently elected Liberal MP for Kingston and the Islands, about science policy in Canada published in the July-Sept. 2011 issue of Physics in Canada (http://www.cap.ca/en/article/interview-ted-hsu-liberal-mp-kingston-and-islands-conducted-june-2-2011), well said Dr. Hsu: "I would like to see Canada build a new research reactor. This is not something that is party policy. Personally as far as nuclear power is concerned I would like nuclear power to compete on a fully-costed basis and leave it at that. By fully-costed I mean making sure we take into account the full cost of decommissioning and waste disposal and the risk of something going wrong. But a research reactor is a different thing. It’s easy in the physics community to say “Let’s build a research reactor. You know it’s not the same as a power reactor” and physicists understand that but the general public doesn’t. There is still a certain element of fear of nuclear anything, so I think it will require some good communication to explain that no, Canada has a Nobel prize in neutron scattering and we had a world-leading facility in Chalk River that brought industrial and basic researchers from all over the world to collaborate with Canadian scientists, to train Canadian students and bring leading-edge research to Canada. That this reactor is very old and it’s going to break down in a few years again and we are after all made of nuclei but people tell me the average voter may not even know that or be able to vocalize that. So if you want to study matter then you need a source of neutrons and if you want to make medical isotopes you need to have a reactor and if nuclear energy is going to be part of the energy mix in the future, then you need to study how materials are affected by radiation. I think there is a very good case to be made that Canada should commit to build a new research reactor and commit to being in the lead again in research in that area. So that’s something that I would like to see."