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Facilities/Nuclear Instrumentation Development Laboratory
September 30, 2020

Nuclear Instrumentation Development Laboratory

CNL’s Nuclear Instrumentation Development Laboratory (NIDL) located at the Chalk River Laboratories (CRL) is used for the development of advanced nuclear instrumentation and detector systems. The NIDL is equipped with sensor test equipment, analogue and digital signal processing electronics, neutron, alpha, beta- and gamma-ray detectors, cosmic ray muon detectors, and reactor antineutrino detectors. The NIDL has ready access to a variety of radiation sources and radiation environments, in a wide range of radiation types and intensities making it a unique laboratory. It also has prompt access to nuclear and radioactive materials, as well as two research reactors and shielded facilities for further experimentation, all located within CRL.

The Nuclear Instrumentation Development Laboratory is able to model, create and test components on site at CRL, which makes this facility particularly useful for the conceptualization testing of nuclear instrumentation. The NIDL possesses solid and liquid scintillators, ion-chambers, fission chambers, Geiger-Mueller tubes, solid-state detectors and fibre-optics, which can all be used for nuclear instrumentation development.

The NIDL staff are members of the Applied Physics Branch at CRL. They have expertise and experience in all aspects of experimental nuclear science, including nuclear, particle, and reactor physics, electrical, mechanical and nuclear engineering.

There are a wide range of CNL facilities that enhance the NIDL’s capabilities for nuclear instrumentation system development and testing, such as the ZED-2 reactor where the NIDL tests components.

The Nuclear Instrumentation Development Laboratory would like to continue to develop partnerships with universities looking to expand on cutting edge technologies and would be interested in collaborations to bring technologies to market.